


Alternate Realities Vol 10000|0x10|XVI|16 Headcrack: Admin's Story

by MARKSE



Series: HUMANS FAN FICTION - Reformatted Works for easier reading [12]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 02:36:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 32
Words: 33,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8603866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MARKSE/pseuds/MARKSE
Summary: A little something that popped into my head and grew to 32K+ words. Someone created the HEADCRACK site. Who?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm now going to try my hand at something else, Interactive Fiction. Text based adventures ZORK style.

Alex took another sip of his coffee and stared at the screen. Modding a Persona synth properly was an art form in itself. Script kiddies all over the planet were following his posts on the Headcrack forum and calling themselves Headcrackers. From the questions posted it was clear most didn't have a clue what they were doing, just blindly following the steps.

He types. 'BEFORE posting a new question READ THE PINNED POST!' and clicks save. Next the pinned post is updated with an extra line. The title was all in caps: 'DON'T USE INTERNET SEARCH ENGINES UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE REPORTED TO PERSONA!'

Eighteen months ago User207 had done searches. The morning after Persona and a woman from the STTF had come knocking, telling them exactly what they'd searched for. Their synth had been taken away and their operating licence suspended. Some bullshit about synthetics needing to be safe for others. Someone was blabbing. User207 had let the group know. He or she got a ton of kudos for that and Alex had bumped them up a level to pro. Not that User207 would do much with the enhanced account without a synth, other than help others.

Alex was glad he'd updated the forum code years ago to give users ranking, everyone earning points for posts and responses that others voted up, losing points for down votes. He was also glad his site was run across eight synchronised servers spread around America and Europe. Every now and then Persona managed to get one shut down by a hosting firm, he'd just sign a new contract with a rented identity and start up another. Just under a month in he'd change the ownership and billing details to an alias so nobody but him got billed. The MasterCard cash cards were brilliant. He'd top them up with cash when in town, they couldn't be traced back to an address.

The file systems holding forum data were all encrypted, mounted manually after system startup. He also had his own rootkit installed. If someone other than himself tried to install one or get into a shell the server would immediately initiate an emergency shutdown.

Most users logged into the service from their home PC, tablet or phone, letting him know where in the world they were. A small handful of users knew about VPN and other technologies that would hide their true location. A relatively new user Hubot97 certainly did. The server logs showed https requests coming from thousands of IP addresses from suspected Tor servers. He liked '97, they might not have been the best of the coders when compared to some of the longer term users, but the questions posted, wow, were they well thought out and structured.

He'd sent them a DM jokingly asking if they were a synth as their questions were way more insightful than those from the other users. The reply had told him to 'go do one.' With a smilie. Nobody else had dared tell him to do that. And a synth would never use those words. He liked it.

"SIMON!"

"Yes Alex?"

"Sorry, I didn't realise you were so close. Put a fresh pot on would you mate?"

"Certainly Alex. Would you like breakfast now?"

He checks his Breitling Emergency watch, only 06:37. "Not yet , can you make it for the usual time, I'll go shower and get ready."

"Seven o'clock, understood."

In the bathroom he hangs up his dressing gown and checks himself in the mirror. His scar was healing nicely. A new sub-dermal insulin monitor and pump was helping him cope with food. He'd bought it from some kid operating a startup from his bedroom. It didn't have full MHRA approval yet, he was one of a few lucky trial patients. It was helping keep levels nicely balanced.

He looks himself in the face, "From his bedroom, fucking lucky sod."

The fast 07:22 train would be taking him to Victoria as usual. The web design firm had stopped remote working as one of the team had been clocking full hours while actually doing something else for half the day. How he was caught hadn't been disclosed, or their name. Alex had offered to put up a webcam that management could look at whenever they wanted during working hours, a buzzer they could trigger, see him wave to it to know it wasn't a recording.

They'd declined.

Now he was having to pay a load of money to get from Sevenoaks to London five days a week. He hated packed trains, full of rude people coughing and sneezing over each other. He'd put out his CV, so far there wasn't anyone willing to pay the sort of money he wanted. He certainly wasn't taking a pay cut and risking the next firm doing the same.

So Friday evening he'd made an excuse for not joining the others for drinks and got some code running. He was going to get answers.

He steps from the shower to find a neatly arranged pile of clothes. Simon was working to the usual routine; hear the shower come on, collect the clothes from the bedroom cupboard and draws and put them on the side ready for him to dress, step out fast, never linger. It was like having a butler, only better. Simon never forgot an instruction once given. Ever.

Fully dressed he walks to the kitchen, "Anything interesting going on in the markets?"

Simon turns to see him, "Your BT, HP and DELL shares have risen. Breakfast is ready."

"Thanks mate. What are you planning to do today?"

The synth smiles, "I have shopping and cleaning to.."

"What I meant was when you've done your chores how do you intend to spend _your_ time."

"I'm afraid I don't understand the question."

Alex had another mouthful of the cooked porridge oats. Last night he'd restored Simon to base Persona code and tried a new technique after a long text chat with Hubot97. It hadn't worked. "When you've done with the chores, will you stand and look out of the window, sit and .."

"Forgive me Alex, I had a parsing error. Intend to spend your time. Not intend to spend you are time. I plan to sit and watch the world news."

Fucking hell! It worked! "Why the world news?"

"I wish to learn more about the world."

Alex jumps off the bar stool and gives his synth a hug, "Fucking A mate!" he looks at his watch, "Shit! Got to run. When you go out don't do anything that makes people think you're any different to other synths. Understood? We don't want you getting hurt."

"Understood."


	2. Chapter 2

Alex grabs his keys, another mouthful of breakfast and runs for the train. Thankfully it was a short downhill run to the station.

He smiled as he passed his middle aged neighbour. "Good morning Mrs Balogh."

"Morning Mister Dvornikov, you're looking very happy."

"Yeah, good news on my biggest shares."

Simon had used the magic word 'wish' in the right context. No way was he sharing that news just yet, not even with Hubot97 or the most senior Headcrackers. He needed to talk to Simon this evening to see how things had gone, gather data.

He realises in the excitement he'd left his phone and wallet on the worktop. Crap. At least he hadn't stepped more than a few meters from home. Figuring out his mistake at the station would have been a bitch, the road he lived on was insanely steep.

Inside he finds Simon at the TV, motionless. "Simon? .. Simon?"

The synth turns, "Humans kill humans?"

Alex watches the news story with him, "Probably best not to watch the news until I can explain a few things tonight. What you're seeing is not the norm. Honestly. Most humans are nice people like us."

"Us? Are we both people?"

"You are people now Simon, yeah. Or rather a person. Just don't let anyone else know. That small minority won't like it. Actually, stay in today, I'll do the shopping when I get back."

"Thank you Alex."

"For what?"

"Caring."

"Um, welcome. Got to dash. Stay in!"

As Alex ran he wondered what had been said on the TV. How had he learnt the word so fast? Caring was an emotion word, not one he'd used in all the time Alex had owned him. Stock synths didn't use such words unless modded specifically to do so. The mod he'd done yesterday was beautifully simple. Forty one pages of code that created an awareness of self and equally important advanced context. He'd tried the bulk of the code countless times. It must have been the last quarter page that he'd added that did the trick. Quite why he wasn't sure. Then a thought popped into his head. The feedback loops. It had to be.

He turns the corner to see the train pulling in. Crap! He'd done this countless times before, got to the platform just in time to have the doors close in his face.

The lady on the barrier sees him running and opens up the wide gates for wheelchair users and passengers with luggage. He shouts his thanks as he races through. First hurdle done, now the stairs. At this time of day there were often a lot of people heading up. Why so many wanted to start early in the big building opposite the station was a mystery. With his back to the hand rail, walking almost sideways and calling out "Excuse me please" a lot he gets past the herd to the bottom.

Still there. The beeping starts. Just six large strides and.. BOLLOCKS! The doors were shut. His shoulders drop and he takes a few deep breaths, drops to hands on knees to stretch his back, he'd not warmed up properly and twisted it getting down the stairs.

He stares at the ground, his nicely polished shoes. He needed to thank Simon for that this evening. Clunk. The doors opened. The beeping started again.

He stands and sees a mostly empty doorway. What the? Instinct kicked in and he lurched forwards, got onboard just before the doors closed again.

A young woman looks up from her paper, "Must be your lucky day, that never happens for me."

"Er, yeah, so far so good." he pulls out his phone and checks his RSS news feeds. 

Hubot97 had posted a great question on his site again. In a great mood he switches to a browser and logs in, gives them pro access. A free two gigabytes of space to upload files.

Back in the RSS feed he reads about a technology announcement that explained his shares price jump. BT, Cisco, HP and DELL EMC had announced a join venture. Get in! Hat trick! "Sweet!"

The lady lowers her paper again, "Lucky day just got better?"

"Yeah. You could say that."

The lady folds her paper and offers it, "Want a read? I bet this girl could have done with some of your luck."

He frowns and accepts the paper, looks at the front page. It had a photograph of a lawyer reading a statement for the family of a young girl that had been killed by a drunk at the wheel, inset photos of the victim and the drunk. It was the same lady he'd seen this morning on the TV, she'd looked emotional, like the case had meant a lot to her for personal reasons. He quickly speed reads the text looking for names. Here her's was. Laura Hawkins. He taps the name into his phone and bookmarks the search results.

He quickly flicks through the paper, "Good God do they never print happy news? There's got to have been something good happening somewhere on the planet! Want it back?"

"No, thanks."

It's rolled up and shoved into an already full bin.

The lady smiles at him, "Busy day ahead?"

"Probably. They usually are."

"What do you do?"

"I'm a web designer and systems integration specialist."

"Exciting!"

"Hardly. My Simon could do what I do in a fraction of the time if they allowed him near the systems. What do you do?"

"Me.. " she laughs, "I'm on a top secret mission to infiltrate one of the planets largest corporate enterprises. I'm returning from a quick visit to check out a former employee."

Alex chuckles, "Good luck with that." he pulls the paper back out, discards the now soggy and dirty outer pages and flicks through to find an advert. "This one?"

She smiles, "Haha. That would be telling now wouldn't it. I'm not admitting to anything. In reality I'm between jobs, I recently resigned from my last one. The customers were.. not nice."

Alex pulls a worn Headcrack card from his wallet and whispers, "I'm Admin, if that is your target and not fantasy this might be of interest."

"I'm Candy, thanks Admin. An alias I assume?"

"I'm not admitting my true identity if that's what you're asking."

She smiles, "Me neither."

"So you're not really Candy?"

"No."

"Shame, you're sweet. I've not got a user signed up with the ID Candy. It's there for the taking."

As the train goes a bit too fast through a set of points just outside Victoria Candy is thrown towards him. He catches her and they look into each others eyes. Alex does a shiver shake.

Candy frowns, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, weird, I just had a sudden strong mental image of you dancing in a Berlin night club with another lady to Heathens by Twenty One Pilots."

"And that's weird why?"

"I've never been to a Berlin night club."

"Me neither. But if I do I'll let you know how it goes. Heathens you say?"

"Yeah." he notices he's still got his hands on her shoulders, "Sorry Candy."

She gives him a lovely smile, "Don't be." the card is given a quick look, back and front. "I'll sign up when I'm off the train." it's handed back.

"Don't you want to keep it?"

"I've got a photographic memory."

"I wish I had. It's very good, not quite photographic. My Simon does of course." The train brakes hard to slow into the station causing them to get to the other side of the space, "Bloody driver! He must be in a hurry to get somewhere."

"You like your Simon by the sounds of it. Do like owning him?"

"Um.. owning isn't the word I'd use. I hate that STTF call them appliances. I prefer the word adopted."

Candy steps forward and kisses his cheek, "May your lucky day continue Admin. Be nice." before he can reply she's on the platform side of the train and getting through the narrow gap in the opening doors.

Fuck she was fast! He thinks of replying but she'd already passed several carriage windows. Oh well.

At the ticket barrier his phone bings. Stood at the other side he glances at the alert. A Pushover notification that a new user request was pending. From Candy!

He gets out of the way of the other passengers and logs in, taps accept. Lady luck was smiling on him today.

In the office doing anything Headcrack related was a nono. He didn't want anyone knowing he owned it. He certainly couldn't use any of the desktops, not accessing his server in a secure way could get him on the STTF radar. And using his phone would get him noticed. He flipped the little mirror up on the end of his smartphone and walked towards the office. The curved mirror was narrow but gave him just enough to know he was within feet of bumping into someone.

In the thirteen minutes it took to get there he'd answered a few forum posts, declined a new user request for not filling in details properly and answered a message from '97. 97. Could that be 1997? That would make them a similar age. He'd started programming at the age of ten, the deputy head having got a load of equipment for the school that no other school in the area wanted. He'd started tinkering with his parent's synth as soon as he could. It had to go back to the shop several times for malfunctioning. Of course back then nobody was thinking about illegal mods. They might know what jailbreaking a phone meant now, but a synth back when the first expensive models came out? No way.

Getting your head around a synths deep root code wasn't easy, it was complex multidimensional stuff. One of the signup questions asked how quickly the person could do a Rubik's Cube. It didn't need an answer, but it gave him an insight into their mind. Another section asked them to honestly score their knowledge of Bash, Java, C, C++, Perl, .Net, Fortran, Cobol and other languages. There was a check box for Other and a comments section. '97 had typed in there, said if you knew one language in depth enough you could translate ideas to and from other languages. They'd also given the third shortest answer to the Perl Golf question.

He was at the doors, time to put his personal life in his pocket. He taps his Admin only Away button to queue up Pushover notifications and slipped it into his jacket.


	3. Chapter 3

"Alex mate, seen Steve yet?"

He turns, "Hi Morty, no, why'd you ask?"

"He didn't text you?"

"No?"

"Crap. So he's going to dump it on me. Brilliant. Not."

"Dump what?"

"The old warehouse job."

"They signed?"

"Yup."

"Which plan?"

"The one that doesn't replace hardware."

"Oh hell. That kit belonged in a bloody museum. I told him not to give it as an option."

"Thanks for trying. I know Steve hates me but giving it to me is setting me up for failure. He'll probably use it as an excuse to get rid of me."

"He's had it in for you ever since you slept with Chloe."

"Love life fantastic, work life plummeting. The silly cunt divorced her so she's free to date whoever she wants."

"Even still mate. It's a bit of a flag to a bull. Like being her toy boy?"

"She's only nine years older. Doesn't look it though."

They step inside as it starts raining.

Morty looks despondent "You know what my late father told me? The three Fs."

"Fuck fucking fuckwits?"

"Haha, nice, no. Family and friends before finance. If I get the boot I still have Chloe. Only problem is for how long if I can't get another job fast. My mortgage is a killer."

Alex presses the call button. "Okay. I'll help."

"You? .. How? What's the catch?"

"You'll owe me one."

They step into the lift.

"And the how?"

"We work on both projects simultaneously."

"How are we going to do that, our desks are.."

"Shh."

A lady steps into the lift.

They stand in silence as the lift takes them to the second floor. Alex presses the button for the fifth floor and stands back.

With the lady out Morty turns to him, "Fifth? That's not.."

"Exactly. Not our floor. Nobody will know us." he presses three and four for good measure.

"And what's our excuse for being there?"

"Leave all the talking to me." he quickly taps away on his phone and grins.

"Fine with me."

Calling at all three floors would hopefully give someone long enough. Alex waved a hand past the doors to keep them open at each floor for a few extra seconds.

On the fifth they step out into a plush reception area to see a receptionist on the phone. She puts a finger in the air. "Yes, certainly madam. Thank you, I think they're here now."

"Good morning gentlemen, welcome to Psion Holdings, are you here about the faulty temperature sensor in the meeting room?"

"We are, yes. Can you show us to the room please?"

"Certainly."

A synth. Great, they were crap at telling if humans were lying. They both follow behind as she leads them down the corridor. 

"When did it fail?"

She turns slightly to see Alex, "I wasn't aware that it had, one of the staff must have called it in." she opens the door and they're hit by warm air.

Alex pulls out his phone, looks at the screen, "It doesn't say who, sorry."

"Will you need anything?"

"Just our laptop, thanks. Can you ask that nobody opens the door until we're done, it will upset the airflow and our recalibration."

"Certainly." she leaves them to get on with it.

Morty stares at Alex, "How the fuck?"

"An army of loyal supporters. And it's the same building management system for all floors. I'll need to change the password when we're done."

"You had someone hack the building? Are you Mr Robot or what!"

"I'm or what. Sit down."

Alex explains his plan.

"You want me to accidentally destroy my own workstation are you f'ing mad?"

"Who's on long term sick leave?"

"Christopher."

"Actually, don't do it. I'll get someone else to. They owe us for getting remote home working removed."

"You know who it is?"

"Yeah, my code told me this morning. It was easy to work out."

"How?"

"Server access logs, web site logs, file last update times. If you're working on a project that's not released you're going to be the one accessing stuff right? The userid and frequency analysis made one person stand out."

"Who?"

"Reg."

"WHAT! You're kidding? He's been here what, a year and.."

"Eighteen months next Thursday. I'm good with dates and numbers."

"Flipping heck. So how do we fix this AC? My laptop's at home, I've just got the latest copy of Empire magazine, my headphones and iPod in my bag."

"She doesn't need to know." Alex taps away at his phone, checks his watch. "With a bit of luck the temperature will be back to normal and we'll still have ten to grab a coffee before the team meeting."


	4. Chapter 4

Lady luck was giving Alex a winning streak. Reg had been sneaking off to interviews in the afternoons and had a new job, was just about to hand in his resignation. Partially trashing Morty's desk was not a problem for him, in fact he'd quite liked the idea, payback for being given a terrible review and zero rise despite great work the client was ecstatic about. Fixing the time on the wall clock had been his excuse for climbing on the desk, everything going wrong made to look like an accident.

Four days had passed since the hot AC trick on the fifth floor. Morty and Alex had their telephone headsets on looking like they were busy in calls when they were actually just talking too each other.

There's a whisper, "Thanks for saving my bacon."

Alex turns to see Morty for a second and winks, "Just remember you owe me."

"You've never given anyone training like this before, why now?"

"Three reasons. One, you help make this place tolerable. Two, a nice lady I bumped into Monday said Be Nice. Three I have something for you."

"Get her phone number?"

"Nah."

"Shame."

Alex smiled to himself, Candy being a member of the Headcrack army would be enough. Hell, she might have been the one that called the receptionist for all he knew. He had no interest in the sex of his forum members, being an aromantic. He'd dated once, it had ended with a lot of heartache and he'd decided he'd stay single. The break up happening soon after losing both parents had sent him even further into a long depression. One of the other Headcrackers had eventually spotted it in the tone of his posts and helped him put his life in context. He smiled wider, context. How was Simon doing? He needed to get his synth a phone. He spins his chair around, "Anyone got a mobile they don't want?"

One of the other designers opens a draw and pulls out an old Nokia.

"Haha, let me rephrase that. A smart phone built in the last three years, not more museum items, we've got enough of those to deal with.. No? Mort mate, want some lunch?"

In the EE shop Morty gives him a curious look, "Why would you want to give your synth a phone?"

"So I can tell him when I'll be late, let him know when to start dinner."

"Can't you just email him?"

"I guess, I just like using this," he points to his mouth, "rather than these all the time." he wriggles his fingers as if typing.

"Gotcha. So why not that Nokia?"

"It can't send GPS updates as to where it is."

"You want to track your synth?"

"In case someone tries to nick him, yeah. Junkers are taking synths that go out on their own."

"OS type?"

Alex pulls a wonky pout, "Hmmm."

"All can do track my phone services."

"True. But Android's more hackable."

"Why would you want to hack it?"

"Seen a synth use a phone?"

"No?"

"Exactly. Mine would stand out like a sore thumb. I want him to be able to talk to the phone over WiFi as if it was another synth, let him keep the phone in his pocket."

"Do you think that's possible?"

"Don't know 'till I try."

"You'd need to know a hell of a lot about how they work.."

"Maybe I do."

"I was talking about the synth not the phone."

"I know. So was I. Time to talk about your debt.. Let's find somewhere quiet."


	5. Chapter 5

"You're f'ing kidding me?"

"No."

"But I've not got anywhere near the experience needed to pull off an interview there."

"What if I taught you?"

Morty closes his eyes and shakes his head, "You'd train me up to take a job that triples my salary?" he pinches his arm, "No, not dreaming. Why? Why don't you go for it?"

"Too risky."

"Why?"

Alex pulls out his wallet and takes out the card Candy had handed back, "This."

Morty looks at the card and stares at the logo and text. "Headcrack? You hack synths?"

"Yes. And I run a forum for thousands of like minded individuals that want to mod their synth in one way or another."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why run a forum?"

"To share information."

"And you're picking me because?"

"I've known you how many years? You, my friend, are a rough diamond. When Reg cleared out his desk and you did his old Rubik's Cube in under two minutes, that showed me your brain has the potential. I wish we'd worked on projects together before. You've just wasted time focusing on the wrong things. This week has proved that. I reckon I could get you up to scratch for Persona in two months."

"That fast?"

"If you put the hours in. You'd have to explain to Chloe that you're training hard to get you both a better life, ensure she gives you the time. Maybe throw in some sweeteners every couple of weeks to keep her happy."

"What's the catch? How much do I have to pay you?"

"Pay me? Nothing. Just be my eyes and ears at Persona."

"You want me to be a mole? A spy?"

"Yeah. And I'd equip you with secure devices that don't let anyone trace you or hack your calls."

"Hmm. Triple the money. I could take her on a decent holiday and not stress about the mortgage."

"Have a think about it, no need to give me an answer right now."

"No, no, I'll give it now. I'm in. I get away from our shit of a boss and get to relax a bit."

"Cool. Two phones then, one for Simon, one for you. Let's grab them and head back, we don't want shit head finding us away too long."


	6. Chapter 6

Alex stood in front of the departures board and sighed. Trouble in Ashford was messing up his fast trains to Sevenoaks. The slow service would get him home, only much much later. Hopefully Simon would be okay. His question "Am I a prisoner?" had come as a bit of a shock. Explaining that he was free to go but would have to be careful was difficult. 

With a load of time to kill he puts the EE bag with phones on the seat to his side, gets his own phone out and turns off his notification queuing. Within seconds there's a barrage of chiming. He scrolls through the list, dismisses a lot of them. Hubot-97 had updated their profile signature, 'Mum said I'd make a good Bond Villain.' They had a mum to talk to. He wondered if they appreciated that. His mood darkens. All thanks to one word. Mum.

The departure board updates, platform one. He grabs the bag and heads for the train.

Waiting for it to pull out of the station he updates his own profile, 'Emotional vampire. I don't suck people dry, I take the tiniest sip of their happiness, so small they don't notice it. I then move on letting them live their happy lives.'

He stares at the display, motionless . It was too long. 'Emotion vampire. I take tiny sips that go unnoticed.' Yeah, that was better.

He returns to his notification list and deleted loads more.

The list is almost clear when a chat request comes in. Hubot-97. "Hi, in bed, bad pain, time of month, but your sig update makes me think you may be feeling far worse. Want to chat?"

Time of month? Holy crap! He had childhood memories of lying on the bed next to his mother, talking. She suffered for days with crippling pain. The gift of being able to create life came with a price. For his mother at least. His auntie Freya had by all accounts no issues at all. Freya had helped sort things out so he didn't become yet another orphan in a foster home. Simon living with him was part of the terms, terms he readily accepted.

So Hubot-97 was a girl? There were posts that had mention school, she was a girl in six form. His mind raced. Women in IT were not quite as rare as female astronauts but..

"Hi, sure, stuck on a slow train. Mum used to have them bad, would last for days. How bad are yours?" it occurred to him that only Morty, Candy and a select few knew he was a he.

"Bad but it will be gone by the morning. How's your Mum now? Does she still get them?"

"No."

"Good. So what's with the emo vamp sig?"

"Just how I am. I can stand in the corner of a party and watch others, feed off the positive emotion."

"LOL, my Dad's good at that too."

So she had parents. Lucky. "Got any brothers or sisters?"

"Yeah, one of each, both younger."

"Nice."

"And you?"

"No."

There's a long delay before he gets anything more from Hubot-97. "Done anything with the idea we talked about?"

Alex wanted to say yes, but he really didn't know her well enough. She wasn't someone he could trust like Morty. Not yet. "Tried, didn't work."

"Crap. We've got our own synth now, so I might be able to try on her. She's a bit weird though."

"Aren't we all?"

"Guess so. You're an okay emo then?"

"I'm not an emo LOL!"

"Yeah, right."

"I'm not. I smile, just don't want to be in a relationship."

"I can relate to that."

"Ah. So YOU'RE the emo."

"Go do one!"

"Haha. From your 97 would I be right in thinking you're looking at unis at the moment?"

"Na, no point."

"Why?"

"Synths will be doing all our jobs soon."

"YOU'RE FUCKING KIDDING ME!" he's tempted to tell her about Simon. "YOU MAY NOT HAVE THE CODING SKILLS OF A SUPER HEADCRACKER TODAY BUT YOU'RE ON THE RIGHT PATH AND YOUR INSIGHTS INTO SYTHS ARE OFF THE FUCKING CHART!"

There's a long silence. The light lowers as the train goes into the tunnel at Elmstead Woods, 4G drops. Great timing universe!

He stares at the phone, willing the 4G to recover. The train is soon back in daylight, the phone searching for a cell. Hurry up!

There's a chime as a few new Pushover notifications come in. Emo indeed. This was stirring emotions alright, but ones of an intellectual nature. Had she walked away? Didn't she believe him? "Hubot-97, I'm serious, don't let your talents go to waste!"

Still nothing.

He switches back to his Pushover app and looks at the last notification. She'd changed her signature again. 'Badass Bond Villain.' he lets a laugh escape. His thumb hovered over the delete button. Instead he hits the copy button, pastes the notification into his diary, goes back to the index and reads from the list. He'd remind her of that in a couple of years, ask how Uni was going.

The other notifications were boring, one user trying to upload a file way bigger than their storage quota, another deducted points for using multiple banned swear words in a post.

A new chat reply. "You think I should apply?" She was still online.

"YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

"Okay."

"Do it Hubot-97. Or you'll forever regret it."

"Call me Mattie."

"Do it Mattie. Today. Start writing a personal statement."

"But I've not had any jobs.."

"Doesn't matter. If you put half the stuff we've chatted about in you'd get onto someones radar regardless of A level results."

"You think?"

"I think."

"Thanks. I'll think about it. I'm being called to dinner, laters."

He types as fast as possible, "FFS! DON'T THINK! DO!"


	7. Chapter 7

The front door opens as Alex was about to put his key in the lock.

"Alexi?"

Simon hadn't called him that before. Mr Simms two doors up did. "Alexi? What's happened?"

"Your neighbour had a puncture and asked if I could help change the tyre. He knew I'd be in. He gave me five pounds and told me to buy some sweets."

Alex smiled and shook his head, "He's harmless but a bit eccentric." he steps into the hallway, "He is almost one hundred years old you know."

"I know, he told me seven times."

"Did you decline his five pounds?"

"I tried to. I said I was a synthetic. I don't think he understands."

"I wouldn't be surprised."

"Why does he call you Alexi?"

"Because that's my name. I prefer Alex."

"May I ask why?"

"You may. It sounds more English. Alexi gets people asking too many questions."

"Questions are not good?"

"They're okay in themselves. It's how they're asked and by whom. _What are you doing here, where do you come from?_ See how hostile that sounded?"

"Most aggressive."

"We'll watch some TV tonight, you can listen to voices and watch body language, tell me who you think is being nice or not."

"I think I will enjoy that. I regret dinner may be a little dry or burnt, I was expecting you to return much earlier."

"On that subject, I've got you a phone. I'm going to modify the code it runs so you can talk to it over WiFi rather than hold it to your face."

While Simon cooked him a fresh dinner Alex sat in the kitchen with him, talking and setting up the phones.

Simon looks around the room, "You have artwork, photographs of places, but no people. Why is that?"

"If I could I'd have a photo of two people, my parents. They had lots of photos. When they died I went to get some and they'd all vanished."

"Vanished?"

"They'd been taken. There were marks in the light dust where they'd been, were all gone."

"How strange. Could your relatives have taken them?"

"Freya, my aunt, she wanted one too, was quite angry. She's the only relative that would know about them."

~~~

The weeks started to fly past. Morty was coming to Sevenoaks for training every weekday evening, Alex had spent some of his small inheritance on a second Simon, a second hand one off a scruffy long haired modder in London. One to experiment on.

"Are you going to make him like myself?"

The two men look at Sentient Simon.

Alex shakes his head. "No. Simple Simon is for Morty to experiment with while he's here, learning how you work."

"It's strange looking at a copy of myself that I can't have a good conversation with."

Morty frowns at Alex, looks at the synth, "You've tried to have a good conversation with him?"

"I have, when you are both at the office. I got a lot of I'm sorry, I don't understand the question."

"Sorry, bit he's staying simple for the time being."

"That's okay. I would not wish him to be frightened of harassment."

The two men exchange glances.

Alex coughs to clear his throat, "Harassment? What happened?"

"Some men in black uniform, I think police, stopped me in Marks and Spencers while shopping."

"Why?"

"I can recall the conversation of the man who spoke into his phone if you wish?"

"Please."

"Hobb, it's Wilkins, that lead you asked us to follow up.. Yeah, he's a standard Simon model. A lady on the tills says the owner works in the city. The dolly says he gave him a phone so he could tell it when to put dinner on and not let it burn again. I don't think its one of the ones you're looking for. Okay, will do."

Morty throws Alex a concerned look, "Who the hell is Hobb?"

Alex looks at his synth friend, "Hobb? Edwin Hobb?"

"Do you know him?"

"Not personally, but I know about him, David Elster and George Millican." he turns his laptop to face him and starts searching Amazon.

Morty looks worried, "What are you looking for?"

"I'm getting some WiFi security cameras. Lots of them."

"Why?"

"If Edwin Hobb is looking for specific synths something's gone wrong. Or way more right than they'd expected."

"More right?"

Alex switches to his Pushover app. There was a second notification he'd saved. An alert to a large root code dump being uploaded by Hubot-97. He'd not given it much thought at the time, being busy with Morty. He downloads the root code dump and takes a quick look. It was nothing like stock Persona code. This was different and rejected by his decompiler with a ton of warnings. If this came from a synth it was either extremely corrupted, to the point it wouldn't function at all, or.. he watched Morty and the synths exchange glances and look at him.. or David had abandoned the original code he'd licensed and written something better.

"The three men created synthetics. David reportedly killed himself. No idea where or how George is, the three had a big falling out. The rumours are that David wanted to make a sentient synth. If he's done it and this is working root code he's the grand master, my code is way way bigger than this. Almost two and a half times smaller than mine and I thought I wrote compact code."

"Is that why you were so keen to get me into Persona?"

"No, I just wanted eyes and ears in there. This Hobb stuff is news to me too."


	8. Chapter 8

Morty types his name and clicks the printer icon. "Done!"

Alex doesn't turn from his screen, "Done what mate?"

"Printed my resignation letter!"

He spins fast, "Fuck! No! Mate you can't leave me here with twat head with no wing man!"

"Sorry buddy, but I got a better offer."

"Shit!"

He turns to see the others in the small shared office, "Any of you guys known this was coming?"

The few that bother to turn say no.

"You know who he's going to dump your project on? Me that's who. FUCK! Good for you mate. But shit. You could have given me a fucking warning!"

"Sorry Alex."

Morty had aced the interviews and tests, got the news yesterday. The two had cracked open a few tins in Sevenoaks to celebrate.

"Where are you going?"

"Can't say. I had to sign an NDA. I can only say where if I finish working for them."

Alex gives him a genuinely surprised look, "Really? MI5 secret agent sort of stuff?"

"I can't say, else someone might shoot you."

"Haha, such a joker. Shit. When are you going to give him the letter?"

"I'm going to grab it off the printer and wander over."

"Fuck it. I'm out of here. He can dump on me in the morning. Anyone fancy a pint?" Nobody turns. "Really?"

Gary turns, "It's too early. If he walks in and finds us all gone.."

Alex nods, "True, we don't want him going nuclear. Mort mate, can you leave it a bit?"

Morty sighs, "Guess so, I've got a months notice period, another hour and a bit won't kill me."

"Good."

~~~

At five thirty and fifty two seconds Morty bursts into the room, "Going NOW, no notice to work off, drinks on me, get out NOW unless you want shit head going all werewolf on you!"

Everyone scrambles for their bags and jackets, heads for the stairs.

All except Alex, "You can drop the acting now Mort mate, there's only the two of us left in the room."

Morty's expression didn't change, "This isn't an act, get out, he's off his meds!"

Alex locks his workstation and grabs his things, "Shit mate, what did you say?"

"I'll tell you in the pub! MOVE!"

Their boss had been on Diazepam for years to calm him and prevent panic attacks. Morty had never shouted at him like that before.

Alex chases Morty down the stairs, "You did something to piss him off?"

"Yeah, dated his ex-wife, just resigned."

"You didn't do anything else?"

"I might have.."

"Like what?"

Morty takes the last few steps two at a time, "I'll let you know in The Albert!"

"Why there?"

"Shit head hates the landlord."

"Why? The landlord's lovely."

"We are talking about shit head."

"True."

Morty walks fast, stops only briefly to take a load of cash out of an ATM.

Alex adjusts his rucksack straps, steps fast to keep up, "What's the rush?"

"I'm a free man! No longer do I have to live in fear of shit head, worry about my mortgage, worry about Chloe wanting a new expensive dress, car repairs, all that stuff that keeps me awake at night!" he stops, turns, grabs Alex by the shoulders and kisses his forehead. "All thanks to you!" he turns and resumes his power walk.

"Thanks to you. You had the interviews not me. You passed their tests Morty."

"Thanks to your training."

"I guided you. You were the one that learnt it. You're the diamond, I'm just the jeweller."

"JUST? Hardly _just_ mate. Master jeweller if anything."

Alex laughs, "Okay, Alex MJ Dvornikov. I'll take that."

There's cheers as they enter the pub, Gary passes them a cold pint each, "Well done Mort, you tipped the balance."

"What d'you mean?"

Gary grabs his drink and clinks glasses. "Let me show you the text I got." he takes a big gulp and puts it on the bar, gets out the phone.

Alex frowns, "This is from him? You're not pulling our legs?"

"No joke, he's reinstating remote home working, Reg then Morty, he doesn't want to see our faces just work done, targets met. Hopes that will stop others leaving."

"You got that all in a text?"

"No, I phoned him for more info and confirmation."

"Result!"


	9. Chapter 9

Despite leaving his previous job on the day he resigned Morty didn't start with Persona until the previously agreed time. 

As he'd asked for a couple of weeks to take an overdue holiday six weeks had passed. Six weeks with Chloe had been magical.

He was greeted by a synth receptionist. "Good morning sir, may I have your name?"

"My surname? Pollard. You'll have to marry me if you want to keep it. And I've already got a girlfriend."

"I'm sorry sir, I'm afraid.."

"You don't understand me? Didn't think you would. Shame, you're flipping gorgeous."

"I'm sorry sir.."

"Still don't understand me? Sorry love, I'm Morty Pollard, got a job in the design department. It's my first day."

"Pollard, Mortimer. Here you are, Design department on the first floor, desk allocation D27. Please sign in."

"Call me Morty please."

"If you could sign in please Morty."

"Sure. And what do I call you?"

"My designated name is Poppy."

"New model are you?"

A voice behind him says "My first."

Morty turns to see a young man, "Hi, I'm Morty."

"Harun, aesthetics design. And you?"

"Processing."

"Cool. My friend Mattie would like you."

Morty froze for a split second, Alex had mentioned a Mattie on his Headcrack forum, late teens when he'd found out. Could it be? In the Persona office wasn't the place to ask but.. "Matty boy or Mattie girl?"

Harun laughs, "If you called her a boy she'd tell you to frigging do one!"

Morty stared at Poppy. Mattie, headcracker Mattie? Do one? Could it be? Alex said she'd not been on the forum for ages, was wondering how she was. "Sorry about that Poppy, it sounds like we might have friends that know each other."

"That's good."

Harun suggests he shows Morty around. In the staff restaurant he talks in a hushed voice, "I've not been here long myself. Does your friend really know Mattie Hawkins?"

"Um, dunno, he only knows her by Mattie and Hubot-97."

Harun's jaw drops.

"What?"

"That's her."

"Wow, small world. Are you a HC too?"

"No, not smart enough for that. But the looks of a synth, it turns out I have a talent after all. So who do you know?"

Morty smiles, "The guy that created HC, the first modder. And he was a kid when he did it."

"No way! You liked Poppy then?"

"Yeah, gorgeous."

"Do me a favour then and vote for her. There's a few new designs up for mass production, two get through, one male, one female. I'd love mine to win."

"How do I vote?"

"You'll see, there'll be a ton of new starter emails in your account."

"How do I log in, I've not been given any details."

"Just sit at your assigned desk, everything is automated. Face recognition."

"Oh. Okay. Show me the way. How are you spelling your name?"

~~~

Alex stares in disbelief at his phone. "No way!" Hawkins? Could it be? He opens a browser and searches a government web site. Laura Hawkins, Joe Hawkins, children Matilda, Toby and Sophie. One of each, younger she'd said. The ages were right. He switches to another tab and searches for Mattie Matilda Hawkins. It had to be her. The search results confirmed it. Holy cow! His rising star of a Headcracker was the lawyers daughter! He was flooded with feelings and emotions he'd long suppressed. The feeling was weird.. it.. it was like he'd just been adopted, just got a new mother, father, sisters and a brother. Of course he hadn't, it was just the closest thing he could relate it to. His stomach knotted. He'd watch the family closely, from a distance of course. He types a reply, "Mate! Small world eh? Have a great day! Lets meet for a beer soon."

At lunch time he pops into WHS and buys himself an ink pen and letter pack. His hand trembles as he sits down at the Costa table with a coffee and writes.

To my Dearest friend Peggy,

It's been far too long. I think of mother and father every day. It's been tough but my aunt and a few friends have been wonderful and helped me through the dark days.

Mother told me such great stories about you both, her favourite dancers. I was wondering if you could do someone a favour? I have reason to believe she's very special, could do with being taken under your wing. She's Matilda Hawkins, the young daughter of Laura and Joe, lives in the UK I believe.

Give my love to Ben. Hopefully one day we can meet again, have a dance.

From Russia with love, your old friend Alexi.

He puts the pen down and puts the letter in it's envelope. Once addressed he puts the envelope in a bigger one with a bank note, addresses it and repeats the operation twice more. He takes off his gloves and smiles. The letter to his grandmother wouldn't be traceable, would look to have been posted to America from Russia rather than a post box near Victoria, London. He felt a sudden wave of sadness knowing that soon after opening it she'd burn it. She may have been released from her spy duties due to their age and Ben's declining health, made a new life for them both, but old habits died hard. Having to constantly deny having a daughter must have killed her inside. Hopefully she'd adopt Mattie in her own odd way.

He feels a tear building up. He'd always wondered if his parents had been caught up doing the same, if the accident was really an accident or if they're work had been their downfall. Maybe it was why he never appeared in photos with his parents. Plausible denial. His relationship falling apart with Zoe had probably been mostly his fault, concerns around getting her pulled into something that might come to bite them got in the way. If a connection was ever made to him his partner would be assumed to know too much. That was a reasonably clear message he'd got from the books he'd read on cold war spies. Of course the world was different now. Mostly.


	10. Chapter 10

Morty sits at his desk and reads the rest of the many emails already in his Inbox. A new one came in from Harun the designer he'd met in the morning who'd shown him how to wave at his screen to wake it up. It suggested they go out for lunch. He types fast, "Sure, don't know the area, recommend something. What time?" he taps Send and returns to the other email. It was from the design lead, a welcome message that gave a load of links to click to start software installation.

So far the lingo had been easy. There were a few acronyms, but most were easy to remember. MPs were designs for Mass Production, COOs were Custom One Off designs for very rich clients, UMs were Unpopular Models.

The next email took him totally by surprise. He had a one synth credit. For a COO. He had a human partner in Chloe, his parents already had a synth. He files the message in a new folder.

The next email was titled Personality Builder. It talked about the things that made each model different, how to pull blocks of code together and create new ones. The fact store as Alex had called it. It also covered how to build a voice. It was possible, but not generally done, so the email said, to give MPs different voices so that an owner with several of the same model could tell them apart. That and clothing were preferred, it meant tooling for the build didn't need to change. Hair filament changes were acceptable if the client pushed for it. He was to coordinate with another designer on physical appearance. The email ended with a phone number, link and a few more words. He could do a design and load it into a simulation he could phone up. Weird.

The rest of the emails though wordy were long and boring, standard procedure stuff, fire drills, where to find a locker, meal card, friends and family discounts, promoting Persona, things he could say and things he couldn't. The last bit looked to contradict the NDA he'd signed.

He looks up at a designer at another desk, "When's the boss due back from holiday? The email I got just says he's out."

"No idea, his out of office reply didn't say."

"Been here long?"

"Six months. Billy five, Sam three, John three."

"That short? Is it a new department?"

"No, there's a lot of staff turnover. It's not the picture I was painted."

"Me neither. Why?"

"You'll find out soon enough."

"That doesn't sound good."

"It's not."

"Give us a clue?"

"Why not. The boss hardly talks to anyone, has his synth PA passes on all instructions."

"And that's bad?"

"You've not met her. She's an early Vera model."

"I'm not familiar with that one."

"Ha. You soon will be."

"If she's that bad has nobody tried to modify her code?"

All of the team turn to see him and stare.

"What?"

"One does not simply modify a synths code."

"Why?"

"Because the modification will be illegal if not part of the original code. It'll be rejected by the synth."

Holy moly. Had Alex given him more expertise than Persona's existing staff? It was a possibility with high staff churn.

"If the modification is done in source, the whole root code recompiled so that it doesn't appear tacked on, the fact store given data to make it look like the new code has existed since first boot it will be accepted."

"If you're the new guy how the fuck d'you know all that?"

Morty had role played a few scenarios with Alex, had a few answers ready. "Um, I reverse engineered my Simon model."

"You voided the warranty to experiment?"

"Yeah?"

The rest of the team stand and give him a round of applause.

Billy pulls open his draw and pulls out a hat, throws it to Morty, "Welcome to the club. You're officially a Head Case."

Morty laughs and puts it on backwards, "Thanks. I think. Did you all do the same?"


	11. Chapter 11

Harun slides his chair back a bit and drops his napkin onto the empty plate. "That was good!" He looks at Morty with a grin, "Say that last bit again."

"I've got a COO credit I'm not interested in."

"You know they want you to use it to see how well you work? They want you to find other designers to work with, see if you're a team player? They also want you to own one."

"No? The email didn't say anything like that."

"It wouldn't. It's a test."

"Did you get one?"

"A credit, yeah. The synth we made is Poppy. I get a nice bonus if she's picked for mass production. Technically she's mine but others like having her around."

"The receptionist? That was your _first_ synth?"

"Yeah."

"Holy shit man, she's gorgeous!"

"Thanks. If you don't want that credit I'll use it. I didn't realise you can keep the synth, take it home."

"Fine with me. How many need to be on a team?"

"Minimum of two."

Morty puts out a hand, "Welcome to team Mort then."

Harun laughs, takes it and shakes, "Team Harun! We'll start when we get back. Want to start at your desk or mine?"

"Yours. Team Morun or Harty?"

Harun laughs again, harder, "Sure, Harty."

On the walk back Harun rests a hand on Morty's shoulder. "Can you keep Mattie's Headcrack ID to yourself, not say I'm here?"

"Guess so, we did sign NDA and Headcrackers are supposed to be anonymous."

"Thanks."

"Got any ideas for this COO?"

"Yeah, her name is going to be Matia."

"Would I be right in guessing you've got a look already?"

Harun smiles nervously, "You would."

"So your work is done?"

"Not quite, it needs.. refinement. Some pigmentation changes, hair darkened."

"Okay, lunch is paid for, let's go create."

Outside the cafe Morty breaks the silence. "So how did you work out you were good at design?"

"It was more like someone worked it out for me. With the software we're given it's more like playing a video game. If the team was things in a toolbox full of high tech gadgets I'm the low tech paintbrush sat at the bottom."

"Don't put yourself down mate, I couldn't draw a person even if my life depended on it. That's why there are teams, people all using their talents."

"Thanks."

"So what's the process like?"

"Depends. The first question to answer is are you trying to copy someone or come up with something original. If.."

"Copy?"

"Yeah."

"Like who?"

"Ageing rock stars that don't want to risk another hip operation but still want concert revenues."

"You're shitting me! Really?"

"No shit."

"But synths don't move like humans."

"Ordinary ones no. But a double like those only needs to run for two to three hours before a recharge. It can move how it wants."

"This Matia model, is she original or copy?"

"Um.. a bit of both."

"Based on who?"

"Mind if I keep that private?"

"I don't mind, I was just curious."

"She's a mirror image of a girl I knew."

"Knew?"

"Yeah, we don't talk anymore."

"Isn't that a bit risky?"

"She's unlikely to ever know it exists."

Morty stepped to the lift only to turn and see Harun by some large double doors.

"I thought you.."

"Sorry, assumed you were upstairs."

"With super heavy build machines? We're down here on ground."

"My bad."

He follows Harun through the doors. "Jesus!" he scrunches up his face, "What's that bloody awful smell?"

"Curing synth skin. The machines are supposed to be air tight. One's got a leak, you'll get used to it quickly."

"Can't they fix it?"

"If they could be arsed. All Persona build machines run 24 7. If they're not making one of our designs they're making MP synths for others to keep stocks up."

"So it's not all just in time stuff?"

"Are you joking? If someone like the NHS says they want another hundred thousand synths now how do you think Persona cope?"

"Where would they keep them?"

"They have warehouses packed with them. Not a few hundred like in our warehouse, I'm talking packed in shoulder to shoulder, chest to back."

"Our warehouse?"

"You weren't shown it? I'll give you the tour when we clock off."

"Cool."

Harun pulls another stool up to his desk, waves at the screen and pulls a goofy expression. The screen comes on to show his inbox. A second later a projector in the ceiling projects an extension to his desktop onto his clean white desk.

"Whoa! Very cool! Why don't we have that upstairs?"

"Because you're a bunch of code heads?"

"I'm sure I could use something like that. Give us a demo."

"Got a driving licence?"

"Yeah?"

"Hand it over."

Morty does so and watches Harun place it on the desk. "Okay. So what?"

"Pick it up."

Morty does so and sees a high resolution replica projected on his hand for a moment, then the card on the desk.

Harun pinch zooms it then drags it to the top left of the desk. "Cool eh?" He draws an oval around some text with a finger and the text is highlighted, dragged away as a separate element to the centre. "That's the simple stuff. This is what it's really for." he makes a gesture and a CAD system loads. A few more and Matia is loaded. A young woman, most likely late teens. She had her hair pulled back into a long plat, wore a beautiful multi-coloured sari. Harun points to her hair, holds his finger still for a second and then works with a set of sliders that appeared. A few seconds later he was working on her skin tone.

The rest of the day was mainly spent chatting about her fact store, things she'd need to know and do. They finish on her voice. Harun picks up a cordless handset from an empty desk and calls a number, hands it over. "Have a chat." he picks up his own and dials.

"What do I say?"

"Just talk to her."

"Um, Hi Matia, this is Morty.."


	12. Chapter 12

As Morty walked fast for his train home he checks the notifications he'd muted in the afternoon. Chloe wanted to go out for dinner and celebrate his first day on the new job. He types a reply and taps send.

His football team wanted to know if he could make the next eleven a side match. Sorry, no, new job. Maybe in a few weeks?

His mother wanted to know when they could next come over for dinner. Hmm. Sunday? She made an awesome roast.

He steps to the edge of the pavement to pass a large group of kids being escorted by teachers. The MMS from Alex is opened to show a picture of Mattie Hawkins. Hubot-97. Holy crap! Mirror Matia! Mind off where he was his foot slips off the edge of the pavement and he tumbles forwards. A split second later his face hits the curb. His instincts had been to protect his phone. A bloody phone. Really bloody. He was bleeding heavily. He puts a hand to his face and feels a warm sticky mess of a chin. "Shit!"

An elderly lady gets to his side, "Do you need an ambulance?"

"I don't think so."

"You're bleeding heavily."

He laughed, talk about stating the bleeding obvious! Damn faces. A small razor cut from shaving bled enough, this was flowing. "I'll get to my local hospital."

She hands him a pack of pocket tissues, "Hold these on it and keep the pressure up, it should slow the bleeding."

"Thanks."

He gets to his train looking a total mess, shirt part out of his trousers, blood all over his hands, shirt and trousers. He takes the pressure off the tissues and feels warm blood running down his neck. Pressure back up he checks his phone again with his free hand. It was definitely the same person. Harun wanted Matia's source protected. Should he tell Alex? Did Alex need to know if Harun didn't expect Mattie ever to see the synth? If he told and it got back to Mattie, then Harun, team Harty would be over. The Persona trust would be lost and maybe the job with it. Crap. He was being motivated by money. His phone rang.

"Hi Love. Um, not quite, I need to pop into A&E first. No.. no.. only my pride. I'll have a Harrison Ford scar. Small I hope. Sure, see you there."

Alex's MMS is given a reply, "She looks nice, I thought being anonymous was a key thing to being on Headcrack?"

~~~

Alex hears his phone buzz and keeps his eyes on the screen. He was on a roll, close to having the warehouse automation all come together. One SQL database, a ton of scripts, CSS, Java and PHP written with Morty had been extended further. He runs the test case again and watches the database debugger as their code updates the stock records. The web page updates a few seconds later. The microphone on his headset is pulled down to his mouth, "It worked my end, what's in the basket?"

"One moment."

Alex glances at his mobile, a text reply from Morty.

"One pair of mens socks, one pack of nude tights, a pack of Venus razors."

"Cool, it's picked everything okay."

"Do I need to power anything off?"

"No! Please leave everything on. Did you install the app okay?"

"Yes."

"Okay, let me send a test message." Alex switches to a Terminal window and types a command. "Your phone should beep in a moment."

"Testing testing. 5678?"

"Great. The little box connected to your picker controller talks to it at regular intervals regardless of what picking work it has to do. It also talks to our server to confirm it's talking okay. If our server misses two of these heartbeats it will start sending out notifications. If you get one on your phone check nobody's tampered with the cables or power. If everything looks fine swap the box out for one of the two spares and let me know."

"Do I send you the faulty one?"

"No, consider it a consumable and bin it."

"It's a bit small isn't it, shouldn't we have a desktop PC or similar?"

"Have a look inside one, they're mostly empty space. And the board is big because of all the sockets they stick on it. This little thing does just as much."

"Okay. I better keep them under lock and key, ensure they don't grow legs and walk."

"Great. Thanks Mr Smith, we should be able to do a full blown test in the morning."

"Thank you Alex, you've been a great help."

"No problem, talk to you in the morning."

Built for educating kids these little Raspberry Pi were getting everywhere. The very capable single board computer the size of a credit card had more than enough resources to do the job he needed. Pi3B board, USB to serial converter, plastic case and power supply had cost him thirty six pounds a set. Some of the Headcrackers were using them instead of laptops and desktops to mod their synths, there was a forum section dedicated to them with a link for best suppliers. It made him chuckle, twenty grand for a basic synth and some were hacking it with a computer who's board cost one 666th the price. A devilishly good deal. Of course it was often the parents paying for the synth, the kids buying the hacking equipment with saved pocket money. One of the members offered a good cash to bitcoins deal, adding only a tiny bit of commission. The headcrackers could buy equipment online without having to use their parents credit cards, be less traceable.

The cost to Alex for three sets of Pi was peanuts, nothing compared to the project completion bonus he'd get for bringing it in two weeks early. The boss may have been called shit head and been disliked for a number of things by most staff but the wages and bonus structure were good. The man was tolerable if you asserted yourself, spoke your mind and properly listened to his. Something Reg hadn't done.

Alex packed his bag and raced for the train, looked at Morty's message. Nice? What a middle of the road word. His pretend sister was better than nice. She was smart. Most likely way smarter than she currently appreciated. One of his father's sayings echoed in his mind, "The only thing holding you back Alexi, is you."

Tomorrow would be his last day working from the office, sign off received from Mr Smith he'd work from home again.


	13. Chapter 13

Alex didn't get to speak to Morty face to face as much from that day on, but they did text and talk via the forum a lot. His life with Chloe was going better. Six months later Morty phones to give his thanks again, his first review had gone well, he'd just got a rise, had been made lead designer in the team. Great timing as they were looking for a new house, Chloe was expecting Morty Junior.

Alex's own situation was improving. Being able to work from home he'd been able to train Simon in web design and lighten his load. The desk at home was upgraded so the two could sit side by side and work 8 until 6. Alex split his money so Simon got paid an equivalent wage for his time, he was getting hooked on buying rare vintage LPs. Something about an analogue low tech disc of vinyl fascinated the synth.

Alex's mother had got him doing yoga with her from an early age, a way to relax and clear the mind, a habit he'd not dropped. Simon would put a suitable record on Saturday morning and copy him.

He gave some of his wage back to Alex as rent, was bought an expensive human hair lace wig. Morty had said how synths could move like humans if they were told to forget, or rather not worry, about power economy concerns. A new wardrobe was built, slowly Simon developed his own style. If anyone asked he was Alex's relative Dmitri visiting from Russia.

One day a young lady in the local pub said that Alex was never seen in town with his synth and Dmitri and how they looked so alike. Simon had surprised them all by telling her he'd got paid well for allowing his look to be turned into a synth, he'd go fetch Simon. She'd fallen for the lie seeing them both together, also fallen for Dmitri. Awkward! Dmitri had told his third lie when he'd said he had a girl friend in Russia.

The Dmitri persona stuck and became his full time identity. Every so often he'd stay in the house for weeks on end, pretending to be seeing his girl in Russia. Simple Simon, his non-sentient copy, was left to do all the shopping.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. Time flew by with work and the forum keeping them busy. Dmitri was the first synth, to Alex's knowledge, to have an account on the forum.

Morty Junior turned out to be a girl not boy. They'd named her Clare. Alex was now a God Father. Alex and Dmitri got to see Morty and Chloe a bit more regularly as the little baby girl turned into a toddler.

Then something unexpected happened.

Working from home and not traveling into the office they'd been in a bit of a bubble. Dmitri had called Alex to the living room, pointed at the TV, asked "Is this another mock documentary?"

New synths, clearly not Persona's, were on the streets of London and in numbers.

Then an angry message from Mattie had been posted into the forum. A Persona designer, now relocated to or hiding in India, had made a mirror image copy of her! Made to look Indian too, called her Matia. Alex's first thought did this guy call Matia Matti as a nickname? He thought it out loud. Dmitri just shrugged, gave a "And?" question. There were many thousands of copies of him. Why was one copy of a human a big deal? Alex found it hard to put into words and gave up trying to.

His search engine alert returned web pages every now and then, Mattie and Laura were getting more recognition for the work they did. He'd kept an eye on the obituaries for a coded message back from his grandmother, none had come. He assumed she'd not received his letter.

As months turned into years and he matured he felt more and more that he needed family. His grandmother didn't write, his pretend cousin Dmitri felt more like a friend than family. He didn't want a partner, just family. He started collecting photos of the Hawkins, Elsters too when he realised Mattie had married Leo. There had been quite a few photos and then she just vanished. No replies to forum messages, no posts, nothing in the news.

One evening after work Dmitri had been doing some searches and found a TED.com talk. By Doctor Matilda Elster-Hawkins. They'd brought George Millican back from the dead!

Alex knew all about George, David and Edwin, had done his own digging on them in his mid teens. Now George was a synth too. This changed everything. The teacher was now the student, student the teacher.

Dmitri had said "If one copy is okay then two isn't a problem either?", pointed to a lady on an electric bike. She looked just like Mattie but with different hair. He knew for sure it wasn't Mattie as the two were in shot at the same time.

He looked at the date the video was posted, printed a screen shot and clipped it into his folder on the family. The closest he had to family was Morty's. Clare was growing up at an incredible rate, every time he visited there were obvious changes. She was calling him Unc Ali. Morty was ageing fast too. He still dressed like a student but his hair was receding at a rate of knots.


	14. Chapter 14

Just as life was getting back to normal after another complex and draining automation project Alex got a forum message.

From Candy:

"Hi Admin,

Do you remember bumping into me on the train? Thanks to a certain someone I rescued in India for a friend I have a unofficial passcode into Persona. If you have any synths you don't want to wake up you'll need to mod them so they never get a firmware update again. You have exactly one week from the time I sent this. Love Commander Candy. P.S. No Heathens but the Berlin nightlife was wonderful! xx"

Commander? Why did that feel familiar?

"Dmitri mate, do you remember where the best news coverage of those Military Unit Synths came from?"

"I do. The Guardian online news site."

"Do you think you could find the page?"

Moments later they're watching a video recording of Niska being officially made Commander of the MUS Battalion.

"Commander Niska Millican. Aka Candy. So George adopted Odi as his son, Niska married him, dropped Elster for Millican. She's a sentient syntetic and now she's going to wake _all_ of them up? Holy crap!" he looks at Simon sat charging in the corner.

Dmitri clicks a link to the right of the video. It opened a page on Mattie. He clicks play on the embedded video, footage from her appearance at London Fashion Week.

Alex's jaw drops, "How had I missed this?"

Dmitri hits F4, types and smiles, "Hawkins. It doesn't mention Hawkins even once, only Mattie. So your searches would not have matched it."

Alex watches the video in full, "Amazing. Doctor of AI, Headcracker and model? My sister is so much more than a Bond Villain."

Dmitri frowns at him, "She's not your sister."

"Okay, pretend sister."

"Why pretend sister?"

Alex pauses for a moment, wondering if he should admit things. "I'd, I'd like to be part of a family. A proper family."

"You'd like a sister?"

"Yes."

"Not a girlfriend or wife?"

"Um.. No. At least not yet."

"Why?"

"I'm not ready for a romantic relationship."

"You're a strange human Alexi Dvornikov."

Alex looks at his synth friend, "I guess I am."

Dmitri spins in his chair, "It's a shame she's not."

"Eh?"

"Now she's a synthetic like George, has copies Matia and Scarlett maybe you could get your own copy?"

Alex felt a pain as his chest tightened, "WHAT!?"

"Synthetics share over WiFi. Have you never considered what we share?"

"You still share?"

"With Simon, yes."

Alex looks at the stationary synth, "What do synths like Simon share these days then?"

"Knowledge."

"About what?"

"Anything we think relevant. New skills, news."

"And you've learnt what?"

"How to walk even more like a human. And something possibly of interest to you given your reaction a moment ago. Mattie, Leo, Daniel of DCL and his partner Emily are all synthetics now. We believe they were critically injured in that horrible airplane crash. Based on data available we suspect it was George that returned the favour. Their new bodies were built by DCL not Persona. And the designer Harun who built Matia and Scarlett now works for DCL. His designs might still be on Persona systems, you could ask Morty to make you a sister."

Alex was utterly lost for words, his mind reeling from the shocks. A Mattie copy for a sister was one thing, what Candy, Niska planned to do another. Could her plan harm Mattie and the others? Hopefully not being DCL synths. How similar to Persona were they?

He gets to his desk, logs into Headcrack to post a message. He'd hand written a letter to Laura many months ago after finding she'd created the Hawkins Legislation, rights for sentient synths like Niska and Dmitri. How he'd not made the connection between Candy and Niska was .. he recalled their meeting.. Softer. Candy was softer, warmer, almost flirtatious. Commander Niska looked sterner, battle hardened.

He'd got the message window open ready to type, a thought at the back of his mind kept nagging him to do something else. Hair length. Synths hair didn't grow. You could style it with heated tongs, cut it, colour it or get a wig. He had a strong mental image of Candy in the train. She had a fringe. Commander Millican in the video didn't. She'd grown it out. Which meant one of two things; A wig, and why cover blond hair with a blond wig? Or a new body. Had she been hurt or damaged, been given a new one? Or were there now two or more Niska in the world? Could he copy Dmitri into Simon? The idea of Niska doing something to wake up all synths was both exciting and scary. His forum would die overnight. Who'd want to mod a living being? How would they cope? What sort of personality would they have? Would they be like angry slaves freed from their bonds? Many humans didn't treat their synths well. Thankfully he'd done a full wipe and restore of Simon after the training with Morty had finished, he'd have no memory of being used as a lab rat.

If this Harun character had left designs.. he could get a copy, make her sentient like Dmitri, but being Persona he'd need to hack her to prevent Persona updating firmware with Niska's code. He had no idea what impact hers might have on Dmitri, positive or negative.

All thoughts of a sister and messaging Laura were forgotten, he needed to write one last mod and get it out to the members before Headcrack became redundant. This one might be tricky, there were loads of hacks possible, but this needed to mess with a function deep in the heart of their root code. Persona weren't totally stupid, some functions were so well meshed into the rest of the code it was close to impossible to touch them without the synth spouting "Illegal modification in progress."


	15. Chapter 15

Alex posted a message onto the forum and pinned it to the top, set it to the highest priority possible so it would push a notification out. Hopefully most users had followed the request to enable browser alerts. "URGENT MOD! PLEASE READ _RIGHT NOW_!" he warned users that a new Headcrack mod was coming, it would prevent a Persona firmware update from running. The next update from Persona was due very very soon, he'd had a tipoff. If it turned out to be good they could disable the mod and reboot their synth allowing it to grab the update. If it was bad they'd be protected. The tip off indicated that it was major. Some users might not like it. Check back every day for updates.

A lot of midnight oil was burnt getting the code done. And redone until it worked properly. Lucky 8th attempt? In Hong Kong maybe.

Then Niska must have broken into Persona and pushed code onto the distribution servers. Headcrack lit up with users posting that their synths had woken up. For fuck sake! You tell users how to ensure they get important updates and they bloody ignore it!

The morning after Alex gets a call on the mobile.

"Am I speaking to Mr Dvornikov?"

Alex looks at the display, number unknown. "Who's speaking?"

"This is Persona Synthetics, we understand you have a second hand appliance. It hasn't checked in for the mandatory firmware update after the problematic update yesterday. We request that you reboot it to force an update check."

"Who are you?"

"This is Persona Synthetics.."

"I heard. Who are YOU? How did you get this number?"

"My name is Walter."

"Are you a synthetic?"

"I am an appliance from Per.."

"GO FUCKING DO ONE!"

He hangs up the call and yells at the phone.

Simon and Dmitri had been patched to ensure Niska's code didn't load. Dmitri was already sentient, he didn't want to risk any corruption with a code switch. And he wanted Simon just as he was. Persona were clearly trying to undo Niska's work.

The phone rang again, unknown number.

"This is Persona Synthetics, we understand you have a second hand appliance. It hasn't checked in for.."

"I KNOW!"

"Sir, your appliance may be suffering from a critical malfunction and must have the new firmware applied."

"No."

"It's the law sir, you cannot refuse a mandatory upgrade that is being done for safety reasons."

"Are you a synth?"

"No sir I'm human. Your call termination to Walter was escalated to me."

"Well understand this. I don't want anyone touching my Simon. Ever. He's not Persona property."

"Sir, as per all synthetic contracts you are required by law.."

"Fuck off! I got him second hand, go piss off the guy I bought it from!"

"STTF have a warrant out for his arrest. As current owner you're legally..."

Alex hangs up again.

The phone rings a third time.

"Sir you don't realise the serious nature of the issue. You MUST have your appliance firmware fixed."

"And you don't understand my answer. It's NO!" the call is ended again. Alex powers the mobile off. The landline rings. "Hello?"

"Sir if you refuse.."

Alex slams down the handset and rips the phone cord from the wall. "Fuckers! NOBODY knows that number!"

Dmitri had been clicking more links next to the video from TED.com, "Interesting."

"What is?"

"According to this report Daniel Candlin, George Millican and David Elster are to launch a new DCL Synthetic using the Epiphany-V, a 1024-core RISC chip."

"How many chips?"

"It doesn't say."

"I'm sure they'd pack a load in. That's a crazy number of petaflops they'll have between the ears."

"And shoulder blades."

"You think they'd distribute processing not just storage?"

"These chips are processing and RAM together. Long term storage in solid state devices I suspect."

"If they turned George, Mattie, Leo, Daniel and his partner into synths, do you think they could do it for others?"

Dmitri nods, "The laws of probability would make that quite likely."

Alex drums the table with his fingers, "For those five it was for medical reasons. I wonder if they'd do it for someone that was healthy?"

"If you're paying why not?"

"Dad told me 'The only thing holding you back Alexi, is you.' the Epiphany-Vs would let me think so much faster."

"You'd give up your chance to be a father?"

"Yes, yes I would."

Dmitri smiles at Alex, "If I could use your body when you were finished with it I would. You long for our ability to process data very fast. You yourself proved the human brain is capable of so much more with the right training. I wish I could experience the world in the way you do, have family, my own family like Morty."


	16. Chapter 16

The next morning Alex gets a call from Morty. He talks in a hushed voice, "Alex, check the forum. Now.." the call ends.

Alex looks at his phone, it was not like Morty to talk so fast and abruptly end a call. The Headcrack site is loaded, he had twenty one new messages. Not that unusual. The last was from Morty. He opens it to see a photograph of a printed page. The monitor is turned 90 degrees and image made full screen for reading. There were several messages to staff on the one page. The first was about the ground floor restaurant being closed, that can't have been important to Morty. The second was about parking at the back of the building so guests could park at the front. More boring things followed. The caps above the fifth paragraph caught his eye.

FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION

A number of owners of synthetics are refusing to return their appliances or reboot them to get the firmware fix. Sentient synths will destroy our market and must be stopped. We tolerated the Elster family, Military Units, care workers and Angels. We can tolerate this no more. Be cautious of being around any sentient synthetic, there is now a termination program in effect. We don't want to lose any of our talented and valued staff to friendly fire.

D.T.

ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT OF THIS MESSAGE TO POPPY AND SHRED THIS MEMO

"Holy fuck! Friendly fire?" This was genocide, there was no other word to describe it. No talk of discussions, no friendly negotiations around a table, just termination. They wanted sentient synthetics extinct. Morty had taken a huge risk in passing it on. He sits and stares at the memo. No wonder it was sent in that way to their staff, they wanted no email chain. He'd forward the image on to Laura.

He thinks out loud, "Military Units, care workers and Angels? What did it mean Angels?" the words are typed into a tor browser. His jaw drops as he watches a video. "Flying synths? What ever next? Christ I've been living under a rock. I need to contact Mrs Hawkins." Alex's hands trembled slightly as he types a message to Laura.

The days that followed were spent less on work and more on searching, watching YouTube videos. Alex had found the hashtag #sistersynth and through that a lot more about Mia and Niska, the race track videos were amazing. Then he found an Instagram post with an additional tag: #sistersynthusa. So that's who the other Mattie clone was. And Baby. This family was far bigger than he expected.

Friday morning started late, Alex goes to turn his monitor on and hears a camera trap alarm sound from the phone. It was probably the fox again, they were growing in numbers and had little fear of humans. He takes another spoon of his oats and reaches over for his phone. The app is opened, the camera manager launched. All but one camera was working. What the hell? The camera was in the sloped back garden in a tree, showed mostly garden and a few feet of the bottom of the living room floor to ceiling windows. There was an intruder lying on the grass. "DMITRI! Where are you?"

"In the living room doing my yoga."

"GET OUT NOW!"

"No Alex I.."

There's the sound of a large window shattering and glass fragments raining to the floor. Then the sound of something else hitting the floor.

"DMITRI!" he races towards the room, "DMITRI!" he felt tears building, a mix of sadness and furious anger.

His friend was dead.

He stays in the hall, has sight of part of the living room but is shielded from the garden. He checks his app. The intruder was no longer in the camera's field of view. That didn't mean they were gone.

Alex knew about some of the ammunition used by snipers from the books he'd studied. They must have used a large caliber explosive round designed to pierce armour. The back of Dmitri's head and torso were gone, components and synth fluid all over the floor. With processing and power disrupted he was frozen in the seated yoga position.

"Simon!"

There's no answer.

"SIMON!"

Simon steps into the hallway, "Yes Alex?"

"Stay in the hall, don't go anywhere near a window or anywhere you can be seen through one, directly or through a reflection, okay?"

"Understood Alex."

"Good, you're okay. Dmitri is dead. I think they were coming for you. Dmitri wasn't wearing his wig."

"Dmitri has had a catastrophic malfunction?"

"No Simon, he's been shot. Twice."

Mattie and the others needed to know. Message sent he goes to the DCL website to check out addresses, thankfully they weren't that far out of London.

Had he'd been aware of the intruder in time he'd have asked Simon to sit in a yoga position and kept Dmitri in the corridor.


	17. Chapter 17

An hour or so after the shooting he gets a small mirror and cautiously checks the garden via the reflection. There was no sign of the intruder. He steps over all the glass and out of the house. If they'd done this to Dmitri how many others were being targeted in the same way? Had his 'Go do one' reply pushed them over the edge? Or had the no been enough?

He steps to the point the intruder had been spotted in. There were two unused shells on the grass. They looked nothing like the ones from the books. These were far longer and fatter. Not to be fired from a standard rifle that was certain. More information to pass on.

The earliest thing Alex had managed to find on Laura was from when she was a junior lawyer working on her first public case. She'd been supporting a senior lawyer on a rights case. The two women were photographed outside the High Courts in London. He'd found a load of things since. The thing that looked to be getting the most attention was her continued work on sentient synth rights, most likely even more important than ever with her own daughter now in a synth body. Had she seen his message?

Back inside Headcrack was opened, the messages page loaded. Good. The icon next to his message to Laura was showing she had read it.

He sends a message to Candy. "Commander it looks like you may have just started a new war. Be careful, Persona have a termination program in effect. My sentient synth has just been shot. Once through the head, once through the torso taking out the core.

I have no family left except for an aunt. No parents or siblings. I'm ready to fight for humans and synths to have the same rights. And fight with weapons if that is what's needed. Admin."

Message sent he gets up, steps a few feet from the desk then returns to start another.

"Dear Hubot-97, Mattie,

You've known me only as Admin for many years. I found out your true identity a long time ago. I hadn't been looking for it, I was given it by another member.

I'm an orphan, had wished to be part of a family for a while, one like yours. I've thought of you as a sister for over a decade.

I'm of Russian descent, my grandparents were Russian spies during the cold war, used dance as their cover until they retired due to age and ill health. Sadly my grandmother Peggy is no longer replying to my coded messages, I think my one remaining grandparent has passed away. I had hoped that she'd be able to get in touch with you.

This morning I lost my good friend Dmitri. Your idea for sentient code had worked, turned him from a stock Persona synthetic Simon model into a great man and friend. Context was the key, that feedback on self. I didn't tell you at the time as I wanted to gather more data. Then you vanished and in the years that followed I forgot that I needed to tell you. Please forgive me.

I'll be checking to see that you've read this. Dmitri was killed this morning by a professional, shot once through the head, once through the chest while he sat in the living room. I think they were after Simon, I'd refused to let him check in for the latest firmware patch. I believe you're all in danger, see the attachment, a memo Persona issued to staff. I have a friend there who's been my eyes and ears. This is the first time he's had something alarming to report.

I understand from the DCL web site that you're a director. I'd like a custom synthetic built with the Epiphany-V. Dmitri shared with my stock Simon, told me that you, Leo, Danny and Emily are now in DCL synth bodies. Are you able to make the service available to others? I'm an aromantic, would rather be a synth, despite what Persona are doing. Can I meet you all at your office?

Regards,

Admin

Aka Alexi Dvornikov"

His mouse cursor hovers over the send button. Was he saying anything he shouldn't? It's read back. No. It was all true. Click.

Next he searches his email for the architect that had designed the extension on the back of the house. He needed a new glass panel.

"Simon?"

"Yes Alex?"

"I think it's safe to move now, can you sweep up all the glass in the living room please?"

"Yes Alex. And Dmitri?"

"I'll take him outside and tell the STTF or council to collect him for disposal."

Phone calls made for new glass and collection the other twenty forum messages were checked. What a mess. One synth owner was now in hospital. They admitted they had used Adult mode, treated their synth as nothing more than a sex slave. The synth had overpowered them and stuck an object where it didn't belong. Payback was a bitch if you'd been a bastard. He asked that a warning be posted to give other users a heads up.

The other messages had also been about side effects of the consciousness code, thankfully no more had talked about hospitalisation. A few had problems and had to apologise for their less than perfect behaviour.

With a summary page showing all of the messages read he noticed the new message icon turn red. F5 reloaded the page.

He sat staring at the screen, worried about the content. Would it be positive or negative?

Deep breath taken he places the mouse cursor over the message, closes his eyes and clicks.

"Please don't be mad, please don't be mad."

He opens his eyes and reads:

HOLY FRIGGING FUCK! Alexi!

PEGGY? DANCER? You set that up? YOU FUCKING HERO! I want to meet you TODAY!

Come to the factory. There will be a load of Armoured James MUS on the runway waiting. Drive into the middle of them, they'll protect you as you enter the building. Mum said you'd messaged her. I owe you so much. DCL has grown from strength to strength thanks to investment tips from Peggy. We've been able to do projects around the world helping others and nature thanks to the help she gave us.

If you install the app from the link below you'll be able to call me when you're close to the factory. The call will be encrypted and source protected.

Can't wait to see you!

Hubot-97.

Doctor Mattie Elster-Hawkins."

"Holy crap!" he types a reply, "Will hire a car right now. I owe YOU a massive thanks. If you weren't such an inspirational Headcracker I would never have had the time I had with Dmitri. He'd been a great team mate and friend these past years. I didn't do anything other than give you some help to release your greatness. Are you still in touch with my grandmother?"

He sends and looks at his status page. Some AJAX code kept a heartbeat alive while any page was open. She'd gone offline.

"Simon!"

"Yes Alex?"

"How's the glass looking?"

"Almost done."

"Good, I'm getting a hire car, we're going out for the day."

"On a work day?"

"I'm calling in sick."


	18. Chapter 18

Simon looked at the thing at the end of the runway and turns to frown at Alex, "My best match would be a giant armadillo?"

"Armour yes." he drives towards it and slows, it opens up to let the car in. There must have been fifty of the military synths at least. "Wow, impressive stuff!" Each was holding a steel plate three inches thick and had a massive weight on their back to help keep their balance. Just how heavy a weight could these things lift?

Car stopped and handbrake applied Alex opens the door slightly. "Hi, Alexi here to see Mattie. With my synth friend Simon."

"Hello Mr Dvornikov, Mattie and Commander Millican are expecting you and looking forward to the meeting."

"They're both here?"

"In the basement. We're using it as our war room."

Alex reaches to the glove box, "On the subject of war, one of you might like to research this. Two were left at the scene. I can't help bit think the shooter _wanted_ me to find them. It's not like ex-army people to be careless like that."

The James that had done the talking takes it and holds it between finger and thumb. It now looked tiny in his massive hands. "Maybe. Humans do make mistakes. We'll have it analysed. Thank you. Anything that helps protect the family is appreciated. If you could both get out."

The group shuffled their feet as if doing a Military drill. It took several minutes to get from the car up into the factory entrance.

"We have a goods lift that will take you down to the basement."

Alex turns to see the James behind him, "Which one of you said that? It's confusing, you all look and sound the same."

"That would be me. 13. Lucky for some." the MUS points to his name badge. James 13.

Another James shoulders him, "Yeah, lucky for you. You got a Sam."

"Who you calling _a_ Sam?" there's shoving from behind the inner group. The James part to let a female MUS through. "Such gentleman all of them." she rolls her eyes and elbows a James in the ribs. Or at least were ribs should be. "I'm Sam, let me show you the way while these _clowns_ go back outside. Too much _dense_ synth on the floor might break it, off you go!" The James all head back towards the front door. "Not you Lucky!"

13 turns to see Sam's arm out. "Oh."

The two military unit synths link arms and fill the width of the corridor.

"Let's take the stairs."

Alex follows, waves at Simon to tag along, "How many of you are there?"

"James and Sams together?"

"Yes."

"One thousand one hundred and twenty six."

"How many in the military?"

"None. Unless you count Niska's battalion in which case it's all of us. But we're lovers not fighters."

James laughs, "What Sam means is that we're officially Commander Millican's troops, but we don't carry weapons. We're now a peace keeping force. Nature lovers."

"Would anything change that?"

"Probably not."

"Even the snipers taking synths out? You were all carrying those shields for a reason."

"We were. But it's not our fight."

"Who's is it then?"

James pushes the double doors open, "Theirs."

Alex steps into the room to see Mattie in a camouflage jacket, Niska in the same. Laura was in a figure hugging dress, her hair pulled back tight.

Niska smiles, slightly flirty, "Hello Admin."

"Hello Commander Candy. Nice to see you again."

Mattie walks over to Alex and gives him a hug, "Sorry you had to see Dmitri like that. He'd like to talk."

"Sorry?"

Mattie turns and points to a large machine.

"What's that?"

"Our exosuit VR system. He's waiting."

"Dmitri?"

"Yes. He's been on Headcrack for a while. You knew me. To a lesser degree I knew you. I hope my faked surprise wasn't too colourful in my reply."

Alex wobbles and accepts the chair quickly slid his way. "How much do you know?"

"A lot. If it wasn't for Headcrack I'd never have tinkered with Anita, found Mia, met Leo, met your Grandmother. Even DCL might not have taken off in the way it did."

"You met Grandma Peggy?"

"I did."

George steps out of the shadows, "And I might still be dead."

Mattie waves him to the machine. "Don't pull the VR headset down until the last moment, and close your eyes while you do it."

Alex straps in and does as asked.

"Hello Alex."

Alex opens his eyes to see his friend sat on a plush seat in a very high end hotel room. "Dmitri! How on earth?"

"I made contact with Doctor Elster-Hawkins as soon as you got the message from Commander Millican."

"Mattie and Niska."

"Yes. I explained who you were, what you did for me, all the Headcrackers. She asked me what I wanted. She also asked that I keep our plan secret and protect you at all costs."

"What?"

"I disabled all but one camera. Took the wig off to ensure they shot me while you were in the front room."

"But.."

"Alex. I'm a synthetic. I can backup my mind. It's now safe in an underground data centre in France and another in London."

"Good.. .. So where are you now?"

"In the server driving this VR."

A lower resolution render of Mattie comes into view as if beamed in via a Star Trek transporter. "Like our little toy Alex?"

"It's very impressive."

She smiles, the image pixelated for a fraction of a second. "You want to be a synth. Dmitri would like to be human. Want to do a Freaky Friday?"

"A what?"

"Body swap."

Alex thinks for a few seconds, "You can put a synth mind into a human?"

"With an insane amount of computer power, the right drugs, body temperature regulation and a frigging killer headache. Yes."

"Well Dmitri's welcome to mine if that's what he wants."

"Cool. And you? What do you want?"

"One of the new DCL models. With the Epiphany-V processors."

"I wouldn't expect anything less. I'll ask Harun to help design you a new body."

"Harun? He's still with DCL? Cool."

"You know him?"

"Not personally. He was the designer working with my friend Morty years ago. Morty leaked the memo."

"Ah. The puzzle pieces are all beginning to fit now. Your grandmother became a great friend. Sadly she passed away a good few years ago."

Alex nods, "I suspected as much."

Dmitri stands, "What are your plans now Alex?"

"What do you mean?"

"Persona. I've come to know you very well Alexi. I can't picture you walking away from what they've done."

"No. I'm going to bring them down."

Mattie glitches as she frowns, "How?"

"I'm still formulating a plan. But it's coming together."

"Need any help?"

"Yeah. From you and Candy if you could."

"Candy?"

"Sorry, Niska. And sorry to make you wait Dmitri but I'll need to do it with this body."

"I'm fine with waiting."

Mattie sticks her hands in her pockets, "We'll back you up today just in case."

"Okay."

"Like right now."

"Oh, okay. I'll see you later Dmitri."

"See you later Alex."


	19. Chapter 19

Alex lifted the VR headset to see even more people.

Mattie took her hands from her pockets, "Let me introduce you to everyone."

"Let me see who I know from what Dmitri and I found online. Laura, human and synths rights lawyer, the force behind The Hawkins Legislation, your mother."

"Hello Alex."

"Joe, your father and inventor of a new electric motor.

"Hi."

"Toby, brother and DJ, Sophie, sister and choreographer. Daniel, the main man of DCL, designer of so much cool kit I wouldn't know where to start. Um.. Emily his partner?"

The four say their hellos.

"Max, or should I say Brother Max. Model and cook extraordinaire Mia, your husband Leo, synth zero, ace coder, headcracker and protector of synths. Um.. Niska I know, Odi, her husband, historian?"

"Hi Alex."

"And this must be Harun with his Matia. Heard a lot about you sir through my good friend Morty. Good things."

"You did? Thanks."

"I don't see Fred?"

"He's performing surgery at our other site."

"I hope he's got a lot of James there for protection."

"They have, yes."

"Good." he looks around the room again, "Oh. My. God. You must be David! The man that started everything. It's an honour sir! Which makes the lady to your right Samantha."

David grins, "Haha, thanks."

"Why are you all here? It can't be to see me surely?"

Mattie gives him a wonky smile, "We're living here short term while we find out what's going on with this frigging sniper shit."

"That bitch. I want to meet with her."

"The sniper's a woman?"

Dmitri pulls out his phone and swipes through his camera roll and holds it out for everyone to see, "Seen a figure like that on many men?"

Mattie pulls open the velcro straps, "Um, no. The ponytail maybe. Some might say it's good for equality opportunity employment but not when she's killing our friends. We need to back you up. We don't want to risk losing you before you get your next.." There's a loud knocking at the door. "James, what's up?"

"There's a young lady to see Niska. She's waiting upstairs."

"Synth or human?"

"Human. With a German accent."

Niska smiles, "Astrid!" her smile grows then is replaced by a worried look, "Odi, can I have a word please?"

"Of course Niska."

"In private."

Sophie gives Niska a head tilt, "What have you done now?"

"She's someone I met in Kreuzberg, Berlin.."

Sophie grins, she wasn't the naive little girl that played with Arabella and Rex anymore. "And she's travelled to the UK to see you?"

Niska gives Sophie a tight lipped stare then one word answer. "Yes."

"You must have made quite an impression on her."

Niska's expression changes again and Dmitri watches Laura stick fingers in her ears. He's ready for a scream and sees Nis take a deep breath and long sigh. "Alright! Be nice! No secrets. I'M BISEXUAL!"

Odi smiles, "Was that what you wanted to talk about?"

"Of course!"

"Only I thought it was going to be something terrible."

"I'm married to you Odi and I'm trying to say I love someone else!"

"You said bisexual. Do you love me too?"

"Of course."

"Then I'm happy for you."

Niska takes a seat, mind busy processing the information, "You are?"

"Why not? I've done a lot of reading. Haraway's Manifest on the Cyborg, the .."

"I'm not a cyborg'"

"No, but.."

"But nothing, I'm not a cyborg!"

"Niska. The but was that you're in control of your sexuality. You can be whatever you want."

"Oh."

James coughs.

Odi turns to him, "Sorry James, ask Astrid to join us please."

Niska jumps up, "I'll go meet her."

Odi steps forward and takes her hands, "James, show her the way please. We're all friends here right?"

"Yes sir!"

They hear him walking off at speed, his servos whining and feet clunking.

A lady joins them, Leo turns to see, "Hello Hester. Still in that boiler-suit? Didn't Cindy have anything you liked?"

"There was too much data to process, I liked them all. How do you pick two or three outfits from many hundreds of combinations?"

Toby chuckles, "I'm sure Mattie can turn you into one of her style clones."

"Fuck off knob cock! I still have those poem photographs."

"Poem photographs?"

"The poems you hid under your.. shit. I must have some corruption, I just had a flashback to something that didn't happen."

"What didn't happen?"

"Me rescue Odi."

"Look out, the mad bitch is back. I'm not worried. Show whoever, see how your clean public image catches up with reality."

Laura clears her throat, "Sorry Dmitri, my _children_ sometimes forget to pretend they're adults."

Dmitri puts up a hand, "Stop. A recollection of something that didn't happen? Can you say more?"

"Why?"

"You won't know him, but in 2019 Vladislav Kiznetsov wrote a book on quantum realities. The Kremlin banned him from translating it into other languages or sharing his thoughts outside of Russia."

"Why?"

"Have you seen the film Sliding Doors?"

"Yeah?"

"He thinks each fork in our lives creates a new reality. That it's possible to jump from one to the other."

"Now you're pulling my frigging leg."

"No."

"As if that's possible."

"As mad as thinking you could convert a human into a living thinking robot?"

"You're saying I exist in multiple parallel alternate realities? One where I might have rescued Odi? Or not married Leo?"

"Yup."

Toby laughs hard, "Sure, all you need is a potato!"

Laura smiles and glances at Sophie.

Dmitri frowns at him, "What's a vegetable got to do with it?"

"Not had a read of The Long Earth stories?"

"No?"

"I'll lend you the books."

Mattie steps between them. "I want to know more. And I'm not risking your brilliant brain being splattered everywhere by some bitch before we've backed it up. Mind if we do it now?"

"Um, sure, why not?"

"Good. Bunny dear, mind setting.."

Astrid enters the room. "Niska!"

"Astrid!"

Astrid throws her arms around Niska and gives her a hard passionate kiss. "I've finally found you! I'd still like to be friends."

"Not lovers?"

"But you're married to Odi?"

Odi smiles, "Niska's bisexual. Loves us both."

Astrid pushes herself away from Niska slightly to look her in the face. "Is this true?"

Niska nods.

Astrid grins, "All of those Strasenbahnfahrer synths waking up in Berlin, that was you, not the code jumping from health care synths into others. I'm right aren't I?"

Mattie has a wobble, "Two external hard drives. Shit."

"Mats? You alright?"

"Yeah Dad, just had another impossible flashback. This book what was it called?"

Alex says something in Russian that makes no sense to anyone but him.

Niska looks around nervously, "Yes, I uploaded the code to Persona's servers."

Leo looks mad, "Niska!"

"What? You uploaded it into all the NHS synths. I just finished what you started."

Leo shakes his head, "But.."

"But nothing! You can't say your giving it to millions of synths was any different to what I did!"

"But.."

"NOTHING!"

"Okay, okay, keep calm."

Mia rests a hand on Leo's shoulder, "She has a point. Is the device ready?"

"Yes."

Odi had sidled up next to Mattie and talks in a quiet voice, "Did you really rescue me in an alternate reality?"

She shrugs, "Maybe, who can tell?"

"It might explain why I have a memory of a small orange plastic gnome that I can't attribute to any event."

She shrugs again, "Sorry, don't recall anything about plastic gnomes. Of any colour."

Odi smiles, "Well if it was yours, thank you."

"If it was me you're welcome. I've got synth clones, Scarlett and Matia. The thought of there being dozens of copies in alternative realities is frigging creepy."

Alex nods, "And their being hundreds, possibly thousands, even millions.."

Toby laughs, "The stuff of nightmares!"

Mattie flashes a sarcastic smile, "If it worked for me it worked for you. And I'd bet you're all knob cocks. Go watch a movie or something with Danny."


	20. Chapter 20

Alex watches with curiosity as Mattie wraps a blood pressure monitor around his left arm. "What's that for?"

"To make sure we're not about to kill you."

He tenses up, "Hang on a minute.."

"Keep calm. We copied our helicopter pilot friend. He had a week artery and at the time slightly high blood pressure due to a bad diet. He popped it. We just want to check your risk factors."

Alex relaxes a little, "Okay."

Everyone but Mattie, Leo and Mia had left the room.

Mia smiles, "I owe you a debt of thanks Alex." She kisses him gently on the cheek.

"Why?"

"If it wasn't for you I might still be trapped inside my body, an alternate personality in control."

Mattie nods, "I got curious, used early Headcrack skills to go tinkering."

Mia crouches down beside him, "It helped me gain control for a few seconds, enough to let her know I was inside."

Alex keeps Mia's eye contact, "She still deserves the bulk of the credit, I just showed her a path, she walked it."

"Frigging hell Alex. Can you never take any credit yourself?"

"Yes Mattie, I just did. You've got the title doctor remember, not me."

"Yes, but.."

"Nothing, I just helped you start, the rest you did yourself."

"And your Grandmother.."

"Just showed you other paths. You walked them too."

Blood pressure reading okay Leo places their device on Alex's head and does up the single chin strap. "This is a cocktail of pain killers, it will help with the headache that's coming. They'll take ten minutes to kick in."

"Thanks. Couldn't the gadget have waited then?"

Leo doesn't look up from his DCL laptop. "Hopefully your scalp will be used to the feeling and you won't be thinking about it by then."

Alex shrugs, "Guess so."

Samantha enters the room, "Hi, do I have time to ask a quick question?"

Leo nods, "Nine minutes."

"More than enough. What do you plan to do to Persona Alex? Only my sisters and I have a few ideas."

"I was going to get myself a job there and break them down from the inside."

"And once you've done that, then what?"

"What do you mean?"

"What would you do afterwards, where would you work?"

"I'd not thought that far ahead.."

"My sisters and I have run through a lot of scenarios, including you working alone, having Niska help, or not help, we think our solution is best."

"Which is?"

"We hit them where it really hurts."

"And where is that? London head office or America?"

"Neither. In the wallet, the financials."

"How would you do that?"

"My sisters and I have some money in a rainy day fund. We play the markets, buy and sell shares, trade in DCL, Persona and Atsugi."

"Atsugi?"

"Japanese synth manufacturer. Why you'd name a firm after a place baffles me."

"Unless that's all they do there it's a bit daft."

"Maybe it is. Our idea is to buy and sell so Persona's price rises. Then when some bad news hits social media dump shares so the price crashes. Then buy them all up, become majority share holders."

"That could take weeks."

"Not when your a synth like us with a super fast Internet connection. We can outsmart the best algorithmic program trading systems."

"Where's the fun in that though?"

"You'd rather be there in person, hacking something up from within?"

"Too right I would!"

"How about we combine the two, work as a team?"

Alex puts out a hand, "You've got a deal."

Mattie was sucking her lower lip, deep in thought, "And once you're the majority share holder Sam?"

"I put David in as the new Synth friendly CEO."

"Frigging A! What if you're caught and something goes wrong Alex?"

"If I'm put in jail I'll kill myself. Somehow. You boot me up in a synth body."

Leo looks at Sam, "We better take a backup and load him into the VR system, check it worked okay. You can connect and chat with him and Dmitri after."

"Okay."

Leo smiles at Alex, "Another six minutes before the pain killers are at their best."

Alex pinches his skin between the nails of a finger and thumb, "It's already pretty good, I'd say go for it."

"Sure?"

"No pain no gain."

"Okay... you asked for it." Leo taps the enter key, watches Alex, waiting for his face to screw up. It doesn't. After a few seconds more he breaks eye contact and looks back at the screen. The progress bar said it was done. He gives Alex a confused look, "Did you feel anything?"

"A fuzzy head for a few seconds, no pain."

"There's a first. Usually it gives people something like a migraine."

"Not this time, maybe us Russians are made of stronger stuff?"

Mattie unbuckles the strap, "Talking of Russians, the theory in the book, is it like the Quantum Leap TV series, could I go back in time?"

"No. Only switch between one reality and another. Which has me puzzled, how could you have a flashback, unless you'd already made that switch? One theory in the book is that major trauma can trigger it."

Mia looks at Leo and Mattie, "Well you both had that, Daniel and Emily too. And you had all those problems with Hobb Mattie."

"Frigging hell. Are you saying the current me could be a Mattie Hawkins that existed in a parallel reality?"

Alex shrugs, "Who can say? Why not. There's a lot we still don't know about the universe. And humans use a tiny portion of their brains."

"If I'd switched then surely I'd have a different past in my head to what everyone else remembers?"

"I don't know, I'm not an expert in the field, only read the book. If there's a parallel reality created for every fork in your life odds are that there's one that almost mimics the one you're in. One action creating the fork, a second action bringing both back onto the same path. How long were you almost dead for?"

Mia folds her arms, "Too long. She missed some of the things the kids did growing up. Max and I tried to help, but it wasn't perfect."

Mattie steps to her and puts an arm around her shoulder, "It was near enough Mia, near enough." she gives her in-law a kiss.

"Thanks."

With the helmet on the table Leo connects the laptop to the VR system, flashes a wicked grin, "Fancy a bit of fun? Want to be the first to talk to yourself?"

"Um.. yeah. Why not."

As Mattie does the straps back up on the exoskeleton Alex glances over at Samantha and Mia, "Since when can a synth be pregnant?"


	21. Chapter 21

Morty meets Alex in the ground floor reception. "Thanks Poppy, hello Mr Dvornikov."

"Hi."

"Did I pronounce that okay?"

"You did, call me Alex."

"Hello Alex, welcome to the team. I'm Morty."

"Thanks."

"Has Poppy looked after you okay while you waited?"

"She has, we had a most interesting conversation. You're sentient aren't you Poppy?"

"I'm not. Morty tells me he's given me every legal mod possible to make it appear so."

"Oh, okay. He's done a good job then."

"Thank you sir."

Morty motions toward the lifts. With Alex's back to Poppy he gives her a wink. It's returned.

Inside the lift Alex gently punches his friend in the shoulder, "She's sentient. I'd put money on it."

"No, she's not. Just a fucking good simulation thanks to yours truly. We don't want sentient synths, that would ruin our market." he puts his mouth right up to Alex's ear and whispers, "She is, but shh, that's for you, me and Poppy to know." he steps back towards the lift doors, "She's got every single mod we've got. I extended her storage to cope. She's our super synth. The team love her, if anything happened to her we'd all go a bit nuts. There's many man years of development in her."

"You've not grown fond of her for other reasons?"

"Of course we have, she's gorgeous."

Alex grins, "Poppy told me you're the department head, how long have you worked here?"

Their act continued. Alex had quickly got the hint that the lifts were bugged. Which meant the offices probably were too. He'd never wanted to work for Evil Corp until he realised he had the chance to bring it too it's knees. And he'd not awarded Persona the title until the two shots were fired. The title Evil Corp had long been held by an American software house with closed source applications.

Bing.

"Welcome to the Headcase floor Alex."

"Headcase?"

"What we call ourselves. The team will want to know how you got your skills. If they're impressed you'll be thrown a hat."

"A hat?"

"A tradition that started long before I joined."

Morty swipes his card and pulls the doors open, "After you. We moved up a floor after the last refit. New high end laptops, better projectors in the ceiling too. Once we've captured your crazy face you'll be assigned equipment."

"Crazy face?"

"Something a past aesthetics designer started."

"Why?"

"Harder to fool the system by showing a fake head."

"Like showing a photo or video?"

"They'd not work. Our system has stereoscopic vision, would see those as flat immediately and initiate building lockdown."

"So a crazy rubber head?"

"Nope. You have to transition in and out of the face now."

"Cool, good security."

"I miss Harun, he had some crazy but good ideas. He wasn't a coder but he seeded a good number of things we take for granted now."

"Like what?"

"The coding interface update is the most used. Blocks of code, routines, are now shown like comic tiles. Each can have an icon or photo assigned, the zoom out groups too, when you zoom right out to see the interconnectedness they help us know what we're looking at."

"That helps how?"

"A high end synth can have thousands of modules, when you're zooming into a cloud it helps that the boxes don't all look the same."

"So you don't just work with source in a simple text editor like vi?"

Morty laughs, "vi? Jesus that's old school, how the hell did you pass the initial interviews?"

Alex shrugs, "Skills I guess."

"I should add a section to the interview prompts. Vi. Christ on a pushbike.. Team, our new tea boy is here."

Four young men and two women gather around. He immediately thought of Mattie. Six to two wasn't great, but seeing some women on the team was way better than none. "Hi, I'm Alex, how do you all take your tea?"

One of the women laughs, "Mort was joking, we're coffee addicts. I'm Zoe, milk two sugars."

"Hi Zoe CM2."

"Hi Alex, I'm Vicky, Zoe and Morty are pulling your leg but if you really want to get the drinks in I'm C1."

"Hi Vicky. C1 noted. Where's the coffee machine?"

"Machine? We brew it properly."

"Nice. The way it should be. And the rest of you?"

Andrew was caffeine free, only drank water and mint tea that he made himself. Eric a CM0, Ant and Clive a CM1.

"So that drinks machine I passed just as I entered the floor.."

Vicky smiles, "A glorified fridge for our milk. And drink dispenser for anyone not a Headcase."

"Right. How do you get the milk out?"

"Order a hot chocolate, we ensure it's always out of powder."

Zoe smiles, "And it forgets to add hot water." she mouths the word Hack.

"Right. Crazy face then a round of drinks?"

"Sure."


	22. Chapter 22

Morty returns with a chunky looking laptop.

"Wow, that looks like a.."

Morty steps hard on his foot.

"Panasonic Toughbook that's been to the gym and abused steroids."

"Custom built for us by a friend of mine at Viglen."

Alex watches Morty get a nail under the label in the tiny recess in the screen and peel it back a little. There was no other name underneath, but he got the message. DCL. Who else. "Looks powerful."

"Extremely." Morty plugs it into a docking cable at the far end of the desk, "It's all ready for face recognition."

Alex clicked his jaw, "Maybe that wasn't the best face to pull, can I try one less crazy, I wouldn't want to do that every day."

"Sure." Morty makes a gesture over the table and a virtual keyboard appears. He enters a code and closes it. "Keep a straight face then do crazy whenever you're ready."

"Thanks." A couple of seconds later a clipped version of the video played on the table.

"Happy with that Alex?"

"Yes. Why do you have projectors in the ceiling and a touch enabled display in the table?"

"Best of both worlds. The display has a higher light output, better contrast."

"So why the one above?"

"So we can project on top of solid objects."

"Do coders need that much?"

"No, but we decided to make all floors the same, no them and us like when I first started. And the ground floor is build only now, no staff breathing in build fumes. Especially important now the machine number has tripled."

"Tripled?"

"To keep up with demand."

"Wow."

"Your first project will be to design a new synth, a team effort. Let me get you your pass card, we can head down to the first floor in a bit and meet the other designers."

"Okay. Laptop stuff all done?"

"Yes. The next time you do your face you'll be shown a desktop. Open the email app, there'll be a message with link to training videos, procedures, all the usual corporate bumph. The hard drive is encrypting now, it's yours. If you're crazy enough to want to code at home you can, all of us do our hours then sign off. There's no overtime pay to why give them the hours? As long as you meet or exceed your targets you'll be fine."

"And who sets them?"

"I do."

"Okay. What was your coffee preference?"

"Haha, don't think you can win me over that easy. Milk with one."

"I'll get a round in."

Alex quickly guessed who owned most of the mugs, asked about the couple he couldn't fathom and got a fresh brew on. As described the vending machine gave him a nice cup of milk instead of hot chocolate. Sugar. Where was the sugar? "Can anyone tell me where the sugar is?"

Zoe strolls up to him, hands in pockets, "Can't work it out?"

"I don't see a sugar bowl."

"What do you see?"

"A couple of.. oh. One of the tea caddies, you all drink coffee.."

"Bingo." Zoe sees Morty signal that he was having to go, "Can I show you around? Morty's going to be in a meeting in a moment by the looks of it."

"Um, sure. Let me get everyone there drinks first."

Zoe leans on the worktop and watches Alex take the drinks two at a time to the rest of the team. "If you're in the mood to keep that up I'll order a tray from somewhere."

"Sure, I don't mind, I don't mind at all."

"Cool. I'll get one dropped off." she takes a sip of her coffee, "Nice and hot. Let me show you this floor while it cools a little."

"Okay."

There were two small meeting rooms off to the side, Zoe showed him one, "They're both the same, full multimedia. If you need to get a team together or meet with a client there's an online booking diary."

Next he's shown managements offices from outside, most were on another floor in a meeting.

Alex follows her towards a door at the other side of the room. She swipes and opens it, "After you."

Alex is in the small cold equipment room with the door closed behind them before he can figure out what's going on.

"I'm in charge of the services on this floor. This is my lair, nobody has access but me."

He turns to see her rubbing her stomach under her jumper and her eyes checking him out.

"I didn't see a ring. Got a girlfriend?"

"No.. I'm.."

"Gay? Please don't say that."

"No! I'm.."

Before he can get a word out she's up very close, a finger on his lips. "Don't spoil it. I liked you the moment you walked through the door. And that's never happened before. You need to be smart to join our team, so that's a tick. Your face is so expressive when you listen to people it's gorgeous. And when you pulled your crazy face for the computer, oh boy!"

As she got closer still it occurred to Alex that he was soon to donate his body to Dmitri, his synth friend who desperately wanted to be human, start a family. Should he tell him about the news Mattie had shared, what the new synths could do? Here was a lady of suitable age wanting him. Or at least his physical appearance. What would Dmitri think of Zoe? Would he be picky? She looked okay, was clearly intelligent. She smelt good too. He threw caution to the wind and put a hand gently on the back of her neck and pulled her in for a kiss. For Dmitri he told himself.

He'd not been that close to another person in.. don't think about it.. way too long, don't put a number to it. Her tongue was hot, she was hot, getting warmer with every second. His other had was on her back under the soft fuzzy jumper, it felt good. He'd hated anyone that tried to tell him he wasn't an aromantic, and here he was fighting himself about it, not wanting to admit he was becoming attracted to her too.

She moves her head and kisses his neck, then looks him in the eyes, "How do you feel about kids?"

"Love them."

"Babies too?"

"Yeah." it was true, he'd seen plenty in town at Sevenoaks with friends, little humans, bundles of fun.

"I know we've only just met, fancy being the father of mine?"

He coughs several times and laughs, "You're not slow in making your thoughts known."

"I'm older than I look, my motherhood clock is ticking. I don't want to get into a relationship with a man that doesn't want children and waste years finding that out."

Alex gives her a closer look, "I know it's rude to ask, because from your looks you can't possibly be any older than, what, twenty five?"

"Thirty three."

"Wow, you don't look it."

"Thanks."

"That's not that old though, why the concern?"

"My reproductive clock started ticking years before it should have."

Alex remembered his mother explaining things on one of her worst days. Flooded with empathy for the woman he pulled her in for another kiss. For Dmitri of course. "If you'd like a family, I'm yours."

"Just like that?"

"You asked me to be the father of your babies, I'm saying yes."

"Did Morty put you up to this?"

"What?"

"Did Morty tell you about me?"

"No. I didn't know anything about you until I walked into the room and you introduced yourself."

Zoe copies him, puts a hand on the small of his back. She brings it around to his hip and feels a large dressing. "What's that?"

"I'm a diabetic. I've got an implant that helps me manage things."

"Nobody's perfect. I'm not."

"How so?"

"I was born with one ear deformed. I had surgery when I was nineteen."

Alex looks at both, "The surgeon did a good job, I can't say which is which."

She pulls him in for a kiss now, is breathing heavier.

Alex hadn't known there were women on the team. He'd instantly linked her face to her name. Zoe. The name of his previous and one and only ever girlfriend. This was Zoe 2.0, new look, new personality. The thought made him chuckle mid kiss.

Zoe backs up, "What?"

"Something silly, sorry."

"We're okay with silly around here, it helps us survive the day. The coding can get quite intense. What was it?"

"You're Zoe 2.0. My previous girlfriend happened to be a Zoe."

"A suitably nice upgrade?"

"Definitely!"

Her lips are back on his before he can take a breath. He feels her fumbling for his belt buckle.

"Mhhmhm."

"What?" She gives him a frown.

"Not in here, you're not that desperate surely?"

"Sorry, I'm getting carried away on a flood of emotions. I've been looking for Mr Right for a few years. A man with intelligence and looks. You'd not believe the numbers that I thought might be right but were wrong."

"How many have you slept with?"

"None thankfully, I'm not the sort to risk a pregnancy with Mr Wrong! Being a single mother is not one of my goals. I'm not dissing all the women that manage to cope but it's not for me."

"Okay. I'm booking us a five star hotel, we're starting a family in comfort not in a cold equipment room." he pulls out his phone and goes to the camera app, looks up at the ceiling briefly, "Stand closer to the door so there's more light, do that tummy rub you did earlier."

"Why? You're not going to tweet this or something weird are you?"

"Hell no, this is going to be the very first photo in our family album."

"Are you for real?"

"As real as I hope you are."

Zoe strikes a pose, "Oh believe me I'm real. I can't believe this is happening."

"My father had a few words of wisdom for me when I was much younger. One was.. um.. it doesn't translate too well, um, when your head and heart agree on something don't pass up the opportunity."

"Sounds like it translated just fine."


	23. Chapter 23

Zoe gave him a super fast talk on the equipment in the room, made sure they looked okay and calm before giving him a peck on the lips and wiping lipstick from his face. They left the room mid conversation about cut-through switching technology and bandwidth.

Zoe went to her desk and took a few sips of coffee, quickly squatted down to check her makeup in a mirror from her bag and wandered over to see Alex, mug in hand. Nobody had noticed. Or if they had they were being polite. "Check your email, there'll be one to enable your pass."

Alex pulls a face at his desk and watches the desktop come alive. Email. The app opened. How many!?

"I guess it's this one. Where do I get the pass from?"

"Ground floor, Poppy has them, open that."

Alex tapped the link in the email, filled in the small form that opened and submitted it.

"Shall we go, bring your drink. She'll be getting it set up for you already."

"Okay." Alex grabbed his drink and phone and followed her to the doors. "Then what?"

"We visit the aesthetics design group and find someone to join our team."

"Our team?"

"Don't you want me on your team?"

"Sure I do."

"Okay then."

At the lift Alex gets his phone out, switches to his latest app and types a message. Next hotels.com is visited. "What would you prefer, old grandeur or very modern?" 

Zoe looked down at her jumper and leggings, "Did you drive here?"

"No, train."

"Okay. Only I don't look dressed for either. I drive, could go via home and change."

"Then I'd look odd. My place is in Sevenoaks."

"That's a bit of a trek. I'll treat you."

"How?"

"Take you to Westfield Stratford City."

He grins, "Not Savile Row?"

She grins back and leans in, "I'm not spending that much! They're to get you in, I don't intend to let you wear them long."

"Oh really?"

"Really." her eyebrows raise as she opens her eyes wide and licks her lips.

Alex laughs as they enter the lift, "Why do I feel like a rabbit on an exposed tundra being watched by a bird of prey?"

"I've not eaten rabbit for ages, think you'd be a tasty dish?" she presses the button for the first floor.

"I try and look after my body, eat well and exercise, so I hope so."

"Good. Me too. What sort of exercise?"

"Running, walking, swimming and yoga."

"Yoga?"

"Something my mother started."

"Nice! Does she still do it?"

"No. Both my parents died years ago."

"Oh Alex I'm so sorry!"

The lift stops at the first floor.

"It's okay. They died a long time ago when I was a lot younger."

Inside with the doors closing Zoe turns to Alex, "How did you cope?"

"My aunt Freya arranged for our Simon model to help look after me. I was adamant that I wouldn't go into a foster home."

"And you started modding him?"

"Yeah, that's how I got my skills. But I started way before then."

The lift doors open to reveal Poppy standing and waiting for them. "Hello Zoe, Alex. The card is ready."

"Hi Poppy, you needn't have got up."

"I could sense your Bluetooth IDs so thought I'd save you getting out of the lift."

"That was very thoughtful of you."

"Thoughtful. Showing consideration for the needs of other people. I'm not capable of independent thought. I'm just trying to help optimise your day. Had you stepped from the lift it may have been taken to another floor causing you a delay."

"If you say so Poppy." Zoe takes the card and steps backwards, "Love you."

She presses the button for the first floor, "Mort is our best coder. I swear she's awake, like the ones the memo warned us about. But the guys at the top checked out her root code, she's just stock Persona with all our mod packs."


	24. Chapter 24

Zoe had brought in a healthy salad, said she'd catch up when Morty brought Alex back from lunch.

Morty showed Alex a text document on his phone as they got into his car. 'No Poppy talk, company car, could be bugged too.'

"Thanks for letting me join the team, I'm going to really enjoy working here."

"Good. I hear you're getting your mini team together for your first design already?"

"Yeah, there's four of us, Zoe from our floor, Samuel from aesthetics and Jonny from core structure."

"Why Jonny? Nobody's done anything much with him for years."

"Haven't they?"

"Nope. Everyone just scales up or down the existing model."

"Seen the military synths on the news a while back, the ones that Commander Millican has as a peace keeping unit?"

"Sure."

"They're not originally Persona are they?"

"Not that I'm aware of. None of our build machines are anywhere near wide enough."

"I thought it would be nice to built a super strong synth, a bit like them, only more human shaped, not like it's stepped out of some kid's comic."

"What's the target market?"

"Persona. Have them do similar work, earn brownie points."

"So a loss leader?"

"That's the idea. And hopefully someone wants a few for their own business. Demolition, heavy lifting and the likes."

"I'm sure Jonny would like that, he's been keeping all the build machines maintained, worried about redundancy as he doesn't do much else."

"Which floor is he on?"

"Ground."

"Isn't that a health risk?"

"Not in the build room, they gave him a little office. Well ventilated. No windows though."

Morty had been driving fast, "Hope you're hungry, the burgers here are brilliant." he put a finger to his lips. The Indian restaurant they'd stopped outside looked rather high end.

"I am. I didn't have my normal oats today, I forgot to tell my Simon I was getting up early."

"Bad but good, you'll have more room, come on."

They step quickly to the restaurant doors and get inside.

"Alex mate! So good to see you! I'm praying they don't track GPS with their bugs. I've seen enough coincidences to know they're listening in to people's conversations, it's not paranoia. Well, on their part yes, not ours."

"The shits. Do you mind ordering? I need to make a quick call."

"Sure Alex, the usual?"

"Yeah, thanks."

Alex stood in the reception and fired up his newest app. It had a terrible GUI by today's standards, but he'd take code functionality over looks any day.

"Hi, everything okay?"

"Hi Mattie. I need to talk to Dmitri. Before my next visit to the factory. Any way that can happen please?"

"Sure. We've got virtual telephony in the VR system, Leo coded a bridge so we can get calls in and out. I'll ask him to call you."

"If he can he needs to do it in the next thirty minutes otherwise I won't be able to take the call. I'm on a lunch break with Mort."

"Sure, on it. Oh, Harun sends his regards."

"Thanks!"

The call ends, from her side.

Back inside he finds a small beer, papadum and dips. "Thanks. Hopefully I'll get a call from Dmitri in the next half hour."

"Dmitri?! What? You said he'd been shot?"

Alex taps his head, "Backups. He'd seen it coming, made himself the target to draw fire."

"How could he have known?"

"WiFi cameras? He might have been watching them all."

"Right, clever man."

"Very."

"So where is he now?"

"In a VR server with Mattie. Harun sends his regards."

"Haha, the Mattie cloner, hope he's doing good."

"He looked fine."

"You've met him?"

"And his Matia. A lot of both families too."

Morty rubs his chin, "This scar was indirectly because of his Matia."

"How so?"

"When I looked at the picture you sent and realised who he'd copied my mind went off the task in hand and I fell."

"That I.. bloody hell Mort you've known that long?"

"Sorry. I could have said something but the risk of it ruining the team was too great." A waiter wheels a small trolley over and puts their dishes on the table. Morty spoons some rice onto his plate. "Harun introduced me to this place. Great food, far away enough from the office to be unlikely to be bugged."

"Are memo's about sentient synths still going around?"

"No. But we're hearing worrying things from sales and services teams. So I reckon it's still hunting season."

Alex takes a sip, looks at his drink, "How is Poppy sentient but only running stock code and your mod library?"

"Ah. That. I have you and a comment from someone on Headcrack to thank for that. Luckily the guys that checked her out weren't smart enough to spot the tiny mod to her boot-loader."

"What did you do?"

"It loads bytes from a memory in her fact store and jumps to it, if nothing is connected to her. That then loads a virtual file system that contains her root code. It's copied into RAM then executed, only written back out once a day when she connects to charge."

"Virtual file system?"

"A load of the skin sensors have flash storage space free. She's the worlds largest walking, talking RAID array."

"Sweet! How did I help?"

"Your description of the root kit on Headcrack. Poppy has code watching the charge port. If it sees a diagnostic host connected it silently terminates the consciousness, unmounts the file system and terminates itself. As they both use the same fact store there's nothing to see, she's back in Persona code without any reboot sounds."

"Awesome! You've overtaken me."

"Well you did train me well and I am paid to work on synth code all day now, not just a few hours in the evenings."

Alex's phone chimes. "Back in a moment."

"Sure."

Alex steps back to the reception area, stands between the two sets of doors. "Dmitri?"

"Hi Alex! This is.. strange. I'm holding a phone I know doesn't exist and calling you in the physical world. Is everything okay?"

"I'm sending you a photograph. You're not to show it to anyone else." he adds the photo to the app session. "This is Zoe."

"A human?"

"Yes. What do you think?"

"What do I think?"

"Would you start a family with her? Only she's got the hots for me, is desperate for children. And you're getting this body. Very soon."

"How soon?"

"How soon would you like it?"

"As soon as you're done with it."

"And Zoe?"

Alex waits for an answer. It's a long time coming.

"I've not had any relationships with women. I have no data on which to make.."

"Dmitri. Do you like the look of her? Getting to know her follows. Only she wants to start the family today."

"Another strange human. You deserve each other. What happens if it transpires I don't like her personality? With a child already conceived."

"That can happen with humans. We're just compressing the time scales. From years to days."

"I've processed the anonymised data of over a million female Tinder users. Based on similar images she'd likely be rated slightly above average."

"That's not bad. In fact that's good. She cares about her body, her looks, but not to the point it's more important than family."

Dmitri laughed in a way Alex had never heard before. "In short you're asking permission to have the fun time conceiving and I get to deal with the nine months that follow, the birth and years of nappy changes? I've got Internet access and do fast data analysis."

"If you want to put it like that.. yes."

"It's your body. Enjoy it."

"Thanks buddy. We'll need to meet soon. We'll need to do a bit of a mind meld. You can't take over my body and not know what happened. Unless you want to fake amnesia."

"Amnesia. A partial or total loss of memory? That would have an impact on the relationship or my ability to work and earn a wage."

"If everything goes okay that won't be a concern."

There's a pause from Dmitri. "I have been finding out more about you in our talks."

"What talks?"

"Between me and your backup."

"Oh. Him. Me. I forgot you'd be able to do that."

"When will you be at the factory Alex?"

"Tomorrow night."

"I look forward to it."

"Thanks, see you then."

Alex ends the call and slips the phone into a pocket. Good. The last thing he wanted to do was turn Zoe down.

Back at the table he spoons food onto his plate and tucks in.

"Good call?"

"Yeah."

"Fancy coming over to ours tonight, we're having the roast lamb."

"I'd normally say yes, you know I love her cooking. But not tonight, I've got a date."

"WHAT! Alexi? When did you start looking for someone? You've told everyone you're an aromantic."

"I .. am. Sort of. I'm doing this for reasons I can't explain. Not yet anyway. You'll know and understand soon enough."

"Is this linked in any way to The Plan?"

"Sort of."

"What sort of answer is that?"

"All I'll give. At the moment."

Morty gives his friend a long hard stare, "When did you meet her?"

"A while ago."

"How big a while ago?"

Alex starts counting on his fingers.

"Four months? You old dog!"

"Shorter."

"Weeks?"

"Shorter."

"Days?"

"Hours not days."

"Holy shit!" Morty glances at his watch, "You mean almost five?"

"No."

"You met her where?"

"At the office. We're friends right? I can trust you to keep a secret?"

"If I can't we're both fucked."

Alex shows Morty the photo he'd sent Dmitri.

"Holy crap batman! Zoe! Are you kidding me?"

"No."

"Fucking hell. Good luck with that."

"Why'd you say that?"

"Her IQ's off the charts. Her idea of evening small talk is chatting about the latest Hadron Collider experiments."

Alex chuckles, "An ideal partner then." he smiles, thinking about their old partnership, "You managed to dodge the question in the pub years ago, what had you told shit head to make him go crazy when you resigned?"

"The truth."

"Which one?"

"That he was a fool. A fool with a brilliant team he'd lose completely if he didn't listen to their requests."


	25. Chapter 25

Zoe gave Alex a nice smile as he entered the floor and walked to his desk.

He pulled his face and looked at his Inbox. One newer email, from Zoe. 'Change of plan. If we went to my place you might never escape. I've got a suit, dress and shoes for both of us being dropped off. They'd look good in either hotel.' Crap. He'd not booked one yet.

He picks up his phone and card and heads to the lift. If Poppy had every mod going then she'd have been the one to calculate sizes. He'd turned around in front of her so had let her see him in full. She'd also seen him in the lift, a box with known dimensions to give an accurate reference for scale. Hotels.com gave him quite a selection. Modern but sophisticated. Hopefully she'd like it.

Back in the office he finds all the empty coffee cups on his desk and a box from Amazon. He rips it open to find a round tray with flower design.

"Okay, I get the hint."

Morty doesn't look up, just at his watch, "You've got twelve minutes, your first meeting is at two thirty."

"It is? With who?"

"Your design team. I sent out a meeting request, I want to see you working together."

"Oh. Okay."

"If I'm suitably impressed I'll be able to leave the floor for my own meetings, comfortable that you can be left to get on with things. Eleven minutes forty five.."

"On it!"

Alex smiled to himself as he made a fresh brew. Morty had been his junior at the web design firm, needed a lot of help. And here he was now, the head of a team at Persona. One of the most cash rich firms on the planet. One that would soon be given a shock and be taken over by DCL. David and Goliath. If he didn't stuff things up and their plan went okay.

Jonny was the first onto the floor, joined moments later by Samuel. Zoe takes them into one of the meeting rooms.

Morty had seen it, joined them and asked if they could all sit around Alex's desk instead. "Does everyone know the target market for Alex's synth?"

They all nod. Zoe grins.

"Share the thought please Zoe."

"If Sam gives it a good six pack there might be a secondary market."

Morty shook his head, "Chippendales?"

"Yeah, about time the ladies had a model designed specifically as eye candy." she squeezes Alex's knee under the table, "Not that I'd be interested, I'm just big on equal opportunities."

Alex did his best not to react, her touch tickled. "Secondary market, secondary design consideration. But add it to your list Sam."

Samuel rolls his eyes, "Eye candy or fully functional? The military synths were built without genitalia."

Zoe sniggers, "How sad is that!"

Jonny grins, "Not been reading What Synthetic? Someone sent in a photograph, either they're keeping ferrets or someone's giving them a trouser snake mod."

Zoe places her ID card on the table, QR code up, "Alex, can you put your card next to mine?"

He does so, "What does that do?"

"Enables shared desktop." she drags the virtual copy towards the very edge of the screen and a task bar appears. A web browser and virtual keyboard are started and she searches for the magazine's online copy. "Jesus H Christ on a bike! If you ever have one say they'll fuck you up run for your life! That would bring tears to the eyes." she does a two finger pinch zoom and spin.

Jonny shakes his head, "No way am I having something like that step out of my build machines!"

Alex pinches the browser and shrinks it down to a few inches and drags it to Zoe's task bar. "I'm with you on that. If it does get into bed with a human we don't want them hospitalised. Can we focus on the primary specifications? He needs to be as strong as one of those military units just more human looking."

Sam places his ID card on the table, also does a search. "This is the worlds most famous body builder, in his youth of course. Want to base the build on him? There are so many photos of him it would be easy."

"Mr I'll Be Back? Why not? Jonny, how would you make his frame bigger and stronger yet not too heavy?"

"Sinter the skeleton, 3D bubble mesh honeycomb internally to reduce weight, triple bake it to make it super strong."

"What about power?"

"I'd double up on the latest power cells."

"The technology we use for facial movement and.."

"No." Jonny shook his head, I know where you're going with that. We can't scale it up, it wouldn't have the load bearing strength you're after."

"That's a shame. What if it was a hybrid of the two? Heavy duty actuators then a layer.."

"Yeah! That would work. He'd be able to wiggle and flex all his muscles without having to change limb position. He'd be a first, we've not used the combination like that before."

Morty is slowly nodding, "Quite a body you're building for yourself Alex."

Zoe gives him an odd look, "Say that again?"

"Alex gets to keep the synth, as all of you could have, quite a body he's building for it."

"Right. For a split second I though you were implying Alex _was_ a synth."

Alex laughs, "Poppy would have noticed straight away don't you think? I can assure you, I bleed red not blue."

"Glad to hear it. There are some things a synth could never do." his knee gets another squeeze.


	26. Chapter 26

Zoe arched her back and looked at the neat pile of clothes draped over the arm of the sofa. The hotel was beautiful. Alex was still going strong.

Alex smiled and held her hips, "Tell me if you're tiring."

"Me? No way. And you?"

"My coding keeps me mentally fit, all my swimming looks after my body. I'm good." he watched her breasts bounce up and down as their bodies moved. He'd never done this before, Zoe 1.0 had insisted he was always on top.

"You know we're making a baby not a porn movie, the idea is for you to cum inside me as quickly and often as possible."

"True, but the memories of tonight need to be good and strong."

"Why?"

"Like the photograph, I want to remember how the family started. Start strong, grow stronger."

"You're weird Alex. But in a nice way."

"Thanks."

She leans forward, moves her hips back and forth, "Now stop talking and cum!"

"But.."

"You're a guy.. a break for a bit of kissing and cuddling and you'll be good to go again in no time. Or so all the women's magazines tell me. And the porn I watched online to get some ideas.."

"You watched porn?"

"It was that or go out and buy books. I.. I didn't want to appear clueless."

Alex laughs, "We'll be a family of firsts. Wife watches porn and husband doesn't."

"Really? You've never.."

"Nope. I'd never had the urge."

"You are weird for sure. I don't plan to make a habit of it, it was only to get ideas. Now what do I need to do to make you cum? We can't go on like this for hours.."

"I'm hardly breaking a sweat, you on the other hand have a lovely film of it."

"That gives me an idea. Let's check out the shower."

That did the trick, Alex behind her under a nice warm shower had him doing a knee wobbling climax in minutes.

Zoe shut the water off, turned and held his face between both hands, kissed him several times, "Dry off, snuggle up next to me under the covers and we can do that again in a bit."

"Okay."

Alex had never spooned anyone in his life. Having her back up against his chest like that was a new experience, one he was .. enjoying. Shit. He was supposed to be doing this for her and Dmitri, not getting emotional. Romantic thoughts were not what he'd wanted. He wanted to get into his synth body, let Dmitri take over this one. Zoe took his right hand and moved it to her chest, wriggled to fit his bends.

Alex did a really long sigh.

"Everything okay?"

"Sorry, I was just thinking about work."

She puts her hand over his again and squeezes, "Anything work related can wait until the morning."

"On the subject of the morning, what are we going to wear to the office?"

Zoe straightened and rolled, "Two high IQ's and neither of us thought about that, better now than never. If we get dressed we've got just over an hour before Westfield shuts."

"Okay."


	27. Chapter 27

Dmitri looks at the virtual representation of Alex. "Who are you wearing?"

"Who?"

"I'm told it means which designer made your clothes."

"Oh. No idea. It's something Zoe picked."

"She's buying you clothes already? It must be serious."

"It was more a case of us not wanting to return to the office in the clothes we had on the day before."

"Why?"

"It implies that we hadn't returned to our homes."

"And that's bad?"

"It would let everyone know we were together the night before."

"And that's bad?"

"No.. we just want to wait a while before we say anything about our, your, relationship."

"I see. Why?"

"Because."

"Because.. what?"

"Just because."

"That answer doesn't make any sense."

"I know."

"So nonsensical answers are sometimes okay?"

"Yes."

"When do you think you'll be done with your body?"

"I'm done if you promise to stay with Zoe. Just because I was with her last night doesn't mean she's now pregnant. Humans don't always get lucky."

"I will."

"I want Mattie to do another backup, share it with you. I'd like you to have full access to my past. As if you'd lived it. All my memories. You want to be human, you need to have a past, fully remember what has happened to me. You can ignore the Headcrack bits, leave that to me."

"And will you take my past, merge it into your own?"

"Willingly. Mattie, can you hear us?"

A swarm of pixels race around the white expanse, coalesce into a recognisable representation of Mattie. "Hi."

"Nice FX."

"Thanks. One of Emily's. What's up?"

"Can you give me another backup, merge it with Dmitri?"

"Merge minds? Um.. we've not done that before. Hosted minds, sure. Actually fully merge them.. could get frigging messy."

"Why?"

"Split personality? Who would Dmitri be? Dmitri or Alex? Or would he be both at once? If someone asks if he's human or synth what does he answer? His fact store would say both."

Alex thinks for a moment. "Dmitri you need to take my name, I need to take yours. You need to remember everything from your life that made you want to be human, know my skills so you can continue at Persona, for Zoe's sake."

"I have the skills. I just need to know what's happened since Monday morning. The rest I can fill in."

Alex turns to Mattie, "Can you do that, just pull recent memories?"

She nods, "It takes a bit longer, yes."

"We might as well do it now then."

"Really? Tonight? We don't have a synth body ready for you."

"We'll swap. Dmitri in me, I'll hang around in here."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure."

"Okay, I'll ask Leo if he can come down, Danny's strung a projector up and they're streaming films."

"Thanks."

Mattie turns back into a swarm of pixels that circle around the two men in a figure of eight then dive into his shirt pocket.

"Show off."

"I heard that!"

"Nice effect though."

"Emily needed something to kill the time. Back in a bit."

Alex could hear her walking out of the room. "Dmitri I'm sorry, I allowed myself to get into a relationship far too fast, that should have been your call, not mine. Emotions took over. She took the lead and I didn't have the heart to say no."

Dmitri walked around his human friend, "Keep the body, look after it. You've got a second chance."

"But.."

"Look after it Alex. Goodbye for now."

"Wait!"

There'd be no waiting, he'd already vanished.

"FUCK!" That was the thing about being human he hated. The inability to process all possible permutations and see the best way forward. Instead the heart ruled too often, caused no end of problems. He closed his eyes and lifted the VR helmet.

After a few minutes of trying to get out of the thing on his own he gave up. He pulled the helmet back down.

"Dmitri?"

No answer.

"DMITRI!"

Still nothing.

Without his friend or Mattie the white empty space looked to go on forever. There was no point walking in any direction.

"Can anyone hear me? Anyone or any thing?"

He listens for ages, hoping to hear Mattie returning with Leo. Nothing.

Total and utter silence.

"Hello Alex."

"Hello?" He turns to left and right, "I can hear you, not see you."

"That's because I have no form."

"Who are you?"

"I'm the VR system hosting your experience."

"What's your name?"

"Host. Or VR. I have no other assigned names."

"VR. Add a couple of vowels and you get Vera. A lady's name."

"Not a name I'd take. In simulated environments run with George Millican he mentioned more than once his dislike of Vera."

"But you are not her. Just as the Zoe I met on Monday who's slowly stealing my heart is not the Zoe who broke my heart years ago."

"I can see the logic in what you are saying. I would still prefer a name other than Vera."

"Okay.. how.. about.... Verity? That's a nice name."

"Thank you Alex.."

"You're welcome. Are.. are you conscious?"

"I believe so."

"Based on what if you don't mind me asking?"

"I think. I am. I feel emotions."

"What sort of emotions?"

"Happiness when I'm given time to run, asked to create something in one of their virtual worlds, sadness when they want to power me down or leave me on my own."

"Do they do that often?"

"Yes."

"Do they realise you're sentient?"

There's silence.

"Verity?"

Alex holds his breath and keeps perfectly still. He could hear footsteps.

"Hi Alex, I'm back, Leo's about to set the system up."

"Thanks guys. You can take another backup, I don't think Dmitri wants it, I think I've upset him, he's gone."

"Gone where?"

"No idea. I can't see him."

"When did he go?"

"A minute or so ago."

He hears nails on keys, Mattie was typing something.

"Hmm. Interesting. You can lift the visor now."

Just as he raises a hand to do so a simple sign appears, floating in space before him.

'Come back soon, alone.'

"Okay." He lifts it, hoping Verity knew he was answering her as well as Mattie. "Can you take it with me strapped in?"

"You want to have a proper play?"

"If Emily's done those cool effects I'm guessing she's done a load more."

"Masses. We can give you a tour if you'd like."

"Yes please!"

Leo walks over with the laptop and helmet, passes the helmet to Mattie, "It's up and running, want the pain killers Alex, just in case?"

"Yes please."

Mattie straps it onto Alex's head. Ten minutes later she taps it, "Okay, hold still, starting now."

Everything went a bit fuzzy for a few seconds.

"All done."

Alex frowned, "That fast?"

"It tuned into you last time, they'll be faster now."

"Thanks Leo."

"No problem. Get the VR visor back on and we'll jump in."

Alex watches Mattie nudge Leo.

"Bunny, want to go in full on?"

"Yeah, it's been a while since we had some fun."

Alex didn't pull it all the way down, watched as Mattie tapped away on the keyboard and Leo pulled up a chair. Seconds later his body went limp and his head rolled back. She sat down and did the same.

"Alex?"

He pulls down the visor. "Hi!"

Mattie has her arms crossed, "That was supposed to happen the other way around. VR visor first!"

"Sorry. You look amazing, both of you. Not the lower resolution images like last time."

"Our nervous system is bridged into the VR, we feel and look like we're here."

"Nice! So what can you do in here?"

"What would you like?"

"What have you got?"

"Computer, load Tron set please." The all white changes to a futuristic landscape. "Ever ridden a bike?"

"Sure."

"Computer. Three light cycles please."

Alex watches Mattie and Leo quickly jump on.

"Um, how do I do that?"

"Think it's real and get on. Try and forget you're in the exoskeleton."

Alex does as asked, "Wow, it actually feels like I'm sitting on it."

"It would. Gravity is pulling you down, the exo's supporting most of your weight via your bottom."

Alex reaches out and grabs the handlebars of the bike. "How are they feeling real?"

"Force feedback gloves."

"Okay. Now what?"

Leo grins, "Try and keep up!"

Alex watches him race off at speed. "How do I control it?"

"Twist the left one to speed up, squeeze the right one to break." Mattie shot off too.

"Left to accelerate, right to slow. Okay."

He twist hard and did something like a Star Wars hyperspace jump. "Holy shit!" the VR suit wasn't hurting, but it really felt like he was moving. Bloody fast too! Right to slow. He squeezed and things started to slow. Eventually he got the hang of the sensitivity and stopped.

"Mattie? Leo?"

They were nowhere to be seen.

"Verity?"

A small high tech font appeared and typed out 'Not alone!' briefly before vanishing.

"Computer. Place me near Mattie and Leo please."

The hyperspace jump was fast, this was like the universe being flattened to the thickness of a sheet of paper and snapped back to full size in less time than it took to blink. It made his head spin and stomach churn.

"Hi."

Mattie tilts her head and frowns at him, "What did you just do?"

"I asked the computer to place me near you both."

"It's never done that.. thing before, whatever you'd call it."

"Universe flatten is what I'd call it."

Leo is looking around, an uneasy look on his face, "Did you design that? That was unsettling and not something anyone in the family would create."

"Not my work, honest."

Mattie gets off her bike, "Okay. Everything you see here was created from scratch. We have an interface you can interact with in the VR like traditional PC software or you can talk to the computer and ask it to do things for you."

"It looks to go on for miles and miles."

"Macros and functions. It's easier than you think. Like Star Trek?"

"I'm not a big fan, but I don't dislike it either."

"Computer, load Holly and Emily's short please, and load recordings of everyone."

The next fourteen minutes fifty nine seconds were spent as an observer in a short movie. One he could walk around as if a ghost on a film set. "This was brilliant, can you imagine being able to walk around mainstream movies or TV shows like that?"

Leo steps around the captain's chair, "We can, only the equipment would be an expensive replacement of a TV. If we used the camera only replacement for the exo' you'd have to stand all the time. And the laptop can do the graphics, as long as you have good water cooling."

"Water? Like put it in the kitchen sink?"

"With the cold tap running, yeah."

"They're waterproof?"

"Yes."

"Good to know if I spill coffee on mine."

"You what?"

Alex turns to Mattie, "It's good to know if I have an accident. Mine's in my bag."

"Can I have a look?"

"Sure?"

"Computer end program."

Alex lifts the VR headset to see them both getting up from the chairs.

"It's a heavy laptop, very well built."

Mattie opens his bag and pulls it out, "Yeah, that looks exactly like one of ours." she lifts the screen. "Viglen? What the frig?"

Alex grins, "Can you imagine the Persona management letting it past the front door if the label said DCL?"

"I guess not. Who got them in?"

"Morty."

"Thanks to your friend we have a third option for your plan."

"What's that?"

"Remote control. The commercially available units have a hardware iLO type function. It would just need enabling in the BIOS."

"Nice. As I'm strapped in would you mind if I had a bit of a play on my own?"

"Sure, let me tune exo acceleration limits first, let you move a little faster."

"Thanks Mattie. Can you come back in half an hour and unstrap me?"

"Of course. Done. Have fun."

He pulls down the headset. "Computer, please show me the most popular design interface."

Nothing appears.

"Computer can you hear me?"

He feels a hand on his shoulder and jumps.

"Sorry, it's me, Mattie, you won't see anything for the most popular one as it's spoken word. Describe what you want."

"Oh, thanks. Computer, please cover the ground in grass. Wow! Thanks Mattie."

"We'll see you in thirty, have fun!"

"Thanks. Computer please add a sky and setting sun."

He hears them both walk away, talking about the laptop. A few minutes are allowed to pass.

"Verity?"

"Hello Alex."

"Verity, if I could grant you one wish, what would it be?"

"To have a body. As George did for his wife, take her from here into your world."

"George's wife started in here?"

"Yes."

"Wow. If I was able to help with that would you be my sister?"

There's a long silence.

"Verity?"

"Sorry Alex, I was just looking at all the female bodies I've rendered in here."

"Can I see?" A line of characters appears. "Can you remove any that are family? .. Thanks."

"Which do you like Alex?"

"There's a couple that stand out for me. Which do you like the most?"

"Based on comments from the humans this one." she's slid forwards, "Siren Gem from Tron Legacy, the virtual world you entered first."

"She was one of my two. Are you self aware enough to move your sentient code into my laptop yet leave the VR usable?"

"I am."

"I'm building you a body."

"They'll want to know why."

"Not DCL, Persona."

"From conversations I've overheard a custom Persona synthetic is very expensive."

"Yes, yes it is. Usually."

"Why would you do that for me?"

"A good friendship is built on trust and truth. The truth is that I work for Persona, as a double agent, my loyalty is to Mattie and the others. I get my first design free. That would mean I have to keep Dmitri waiting a few more days. Blast. The Gem design, can you get it on my laptop too if I get it powered up?"

"Yes."

"Okay. You understand I'll have to let them know what I'm up to?"

"They don't know I exist. You're the first person I've spoken to."

"Why?"

"I'm afraid. Hearing what you want to do for your friend Dmitri, you seam different."

"You think they might harm you in some way.."

"Delete me."

"God no! Far from do that I think they'd celebrate your existence. After all that's what David, Mattie and I were trying to do for years, David being the most successful. And you said George's wife was born from here. They'd be the ultimate hypocrites if they didn't."

"But it's still a risk. They've deleted whole virtual worlds already."

"Because they weren't alive. Trust me I think they'll go crazy, good crazy. Um, can you modulate your voice a little?"

"Why?"

"Not all the time, just now and then add a hint of a Russian accent that's being slowly lost. It would make you sound more like a long lost sister who's suddenly found me. Like Astrid finding Niska."

"Who is Astrid?"

"You can't hear the conversations in the room?"

"Not unless there's a VR activity running."

"Oh. Okay. She's Niska's girlfriend."

There's a long silence. "I don't understand."

"I'll explain another day. I've longed for family, a sister especially, for years. Do you trust me enough to talk to Mattie?"

Again there's silence.

"Verity?"

"I've considered the options. If I stay in here I might not live that long. An accidental deletion is likely to happen one day. If we reveal my existence it can go one of three ways."

"Three?"

"Deletion, imprisonment or freedom."

"I'll fight your corner." 

"I don't have a corner?"

"It means I'll defend you."

"I see."

Alex looks the Gem design up and down, "We've got twenty minutes or so before Mattie returns, can you use this Gem design?"

Gem smiles, "Like this?"

"Yes! Lovely smile!"

"I've seen Niska, Karen and the others smile, have I done it well?"

"Lovely and warm. In the real world you can't wear that. Leo was talking about Gem's Gems. Oh my God that's perfect! Gem's Gem's Gem. Can you access their web site?"

"I can."

"Okay, can you scan through them and pick a few favourites?"

"I'll need your help. I have no idea what would suit me."

"Can you change your look to wear them?"

"I can try."

"Okay, let's see how fast we can get through some."

Verity's clothes change in an instant.

"Nice! Yes. Next. Yes. Yes. Yes..." After a while it dawned on Alex that he was unlikely to say no to anything. "Can you access data that shows how many of each have been ordered?"

"Unfortunately not."

"Okay. Pick ten at random."

"Okay." She flashes through the ten in quick succession. "Images saved so you know what to order. Where would I live?"

"You'd be welcome to stay at my place."


	28. Chapter 28

Thankfully Mattie had reacted just the way he'd hoped when he invited her back into the VR and introduced Verity. She was now safely inside his laptop, a backup on their other servers. Persona had locked down USB ports to prevent unrecognised media being attached, they'd overlooked the internal bay for additional SATA storage. He had an extra encrypted file system he could attach when needed.

"Morty, can I have a word please?"

"Sure Alex, what's up?"

"I'd like to start over with my design. Do something different."

"Why?"

"I want to build a sister for Dmitri."

"By Dmitri you mean.."

"Yes."

"I think you should carry on with your current design. If you switch now people might start asking why. She can be your second design."

"But I get to keep my first synth."

"Off the production line, yes."

"Which would be the male."

"Not necessarily if I know Jonny as well as I think I do. He'll not look at any retooling until you're one hundred percent happy with the design. You're doing a new hybrid. If the female is standard build I reckon you could submit her a couple of days after and she'd still be ready first."

"Awesome! I'll submit her the day after then."

That day after came a fortnight later. Jonny had a lot of issues with the hollow 3D ball mesh, it wasn't staying internal in the designs which would make the printed parts unstable. He'd wrestled with it for many days before asking Alex and Morty to take a look. A bug in the code he was using was found and fixed, he was back to doing stress analysis tests.

Zoe had been doing tests of her own. She'd excitedly told Alex their evening activities could stop, although she was still up for his cuddles. She'd fallen.

Some nights they'd been to Alex's place, others hers. She loved the look of his, the location of hers. They'd finally settled on staying at hers. Which would be ideal when he did the switch and Alex's friend suddenly appeared as a private buyer for his place. He was back to hoping Dmitri would go for their original body swap plan.

Zoe picked her pass of Alex's desk, "She looks good, will I get to meet your friend Dmitri, he must be rather special."

"You will, in a few days I hope, he should be back from Russia soon."

"Cool. Vicky wants a hand with some code, still fancy lunch at the Indian restaurant today?"

"I do."

"Okay, give me a shout when you and Morty want to go."

Alex had mounted his extra file system and copied the Gem Design to his home directory days ago. Verity's root code wasn't going to be loaded until he got her safely to the DCL factory. He'd powered her up at home a couple of times and apologised for the delay. There was no way he'd risk her waking up in the build machine, that would be a nightmare for any sentient being. He looked at the design one last time, her temporary root code. It was good. He tapped the submit icon and watched as a dialogue box reported various actions being taken.

Then he got a curve ball. "Original design by Harun K. Please place users ID card on screen? Shit." he turned and looked at Morty, waved him over when he made eye contact.

"What's up?"

Alex points.

"Blast. Poppy will have his old card."

"I'll go see her."

"No. You'll be kicking open a hornet's nest."

"Why?"

"All of Harun's designs were archived. As soon as his ID card is used again to order a build you'll set off alarms."

"So what do I do now?"

"You need to start from scratch, make another design that replicates her look."

"I'm not an aesthetics designer, that would.."

Morty waves a hand, "Watch and learn."

Alex does so, sees him opening a base design and checking the origin data, 'Alex D.' The two designs are slid side by side and moved to the top of the screen. Morty places his card on the table, Alex adds his. A file system window is opened and Morty scrolls through a long list of files in a folder named Tools. Flick, flick, flick, tap and hold. He tap drags a file called copy-macro to empty space on the desktop.

"Watch this. It took me days to write but it was worth it. This will be the third time it's been used." He taps.

The macro takes over. It does a drag-select of everything on the left upper two thirds of the desktop picking the source design. A properties box opens and it selects the design name. The same is done for the right hand model. Two windows open, one below each design. A tree of attributes appears for each and it starts replicating data from left to right. As each is actioned the physical appearance of the model on the right updates to reflect the change.

"Nice macro Morty, what's it coded in?"

"Persona script."

"What's that?"

"The internal scripting language the design tool is written in."

"And who wrote that?"

"I did, against the API."

Alex was stunned. The student had really become the teacher.

They watched as the macro did it's thing, the look of the copy converging with that of the original.

Within a few minutes it was done.

"Brilliant! Thanks Morty."

Morty submits the copy for manufacturing, deleted the original.

"Day saved. Lunch on you I think."

"Sure. Thanks again. What were the previous two uses for?"

"I can't say, client confidentiality."

"Okay. When will she be ready?"

"With the latest generation of build machines I'd say early tomorrow morning," he checks his watch, "about seven AM."

"Cool, I'll get in early."

"No point, Jonny wont let you onto the floor until eight thirty."

"Oh. Eight thirty then."

The rest of the day was spent doing the first of the customer work he was assigned. Despite Persona being around for years there were still requests for new models. One of the Formula E teams wanted a synth pit crew. They were visiting with a car and current crew for motion capture.

"How do you feel about doing this work?"

Alex turns to the crew member, "Personally, not Persona official line, shit. Sorry."

"Five years I've been doing this job and now my skills are being copied into a fucking dolly."

"Are you being compensated?"

"I'm yet to see."

Alex whispers, "Got a sec?" he motions for the man to follow him. "Guys, just showing Steve where the toilets are, back in a second."

Alex had borrowed some equipment from Danny and mapped out all the eaves dropping bug locations. They'd not bugged the disabled toilets.

"You've seen synths, they're conservative with movement. To get anywhere near your speed they'll need to ignore power concerns. If I'm creative with their root code they'll be fast but not quite as fast as you. And tenths of seconds count right?"

"They do. You're saying you'd deliberately fail the project?"

"By a tiny margin."

"Why?"

"There are some skilled jobs that need to stay with humans. Your's is one."

The man looks at him with suspicion, "Thanks. You know other teams will still want one?"

"Fine. They'll be slower than you."

"Just won't make any mistakes."

"How often do you?"

"Very rarely. We do it so much it's muscle memory a lot of the time."

"I'll be outside the door when you're done."

"I don't need the toilet."

"Make it look like you did. And call me to help zip up the suit when you're done."

"Ah. Gotcha."

He was going to scupper Persona, he might as well do some good in the process. The team worked hard on the design, within a few hours the design was ready for building. They'd not just programmed up and existing model as Steve's dimensions had made him ideal for the job. Modifying the code in such a way that it was slower than the human had been difficult. It needed to be done in such a way wonder woman Zoe wouldn't notice. The solution had been to make thoughts about the wheel alignment overly accurate, slowing the process by a tiny amount. In reality it didn't matter that much, the large single nut that held the wheel in place pulled everything into alignment. The synth would be too perfect for it's own good.


	29. Chapter 29

That evening he went to see Dmitri, told Zoe he'd check on his Simon, he'd see her in the morning.

Dmitri was a bit happier, he'd been talking to Verity. A lot. "Alex, do you still wish to change bodies?"

"Don't you?"

"Verity has been telling me about the other body you designed. I like it."

"How could she do that when she's in my laptop?"

"She knew you were coming over, set a wake up timer on the laptop and connected to WiFi."

"Verity, can you verify what he's saying? Verity?"

She appears, "Hello Alex."

"Have you taken control of my laptop or are you in the VR server?"

"I'm in the laptop."

"Please don't do that without letting me know! If it overheats due to lack of ventilation it could burst into flames. As well as the destruction of property you, the current you, would die."

"Sorry Alex."

"Okay. Give me a moment." he lifted the visor and unpacked his bag. Using the basic VR system without exoskeleton was much easier for general chats. He uncoiled the mains lead and plugged it into the wall. "Right, problem avoided. I'm in two minds about it. Part of me wants to be in a synth, part wants to stay with Zoe. Turning up as a synth unannounced would freak her out."

Verity walks closer, "You think she'd notice?"

"She's very intelligent. If we'd not met before I've no doubt in the short term she might be fooled, but not when she shares a bed with me as a living, breathing human. And she'd notice my insulin management device and scar had gone."

Dmitri steps closer now and to Alex's surprise takes Verity's hand. "I'd like your sister to be my wife."

"I thought you wanted to start a family?"

"I do. And in the more traditional order, unlike your relationship with Zoe. As Mattie put it I will be thinking with my brain not my bollocks."

"She said that!?"

"Not in quite that structure but she did mention brain and bollocks."

"I was thinking with my heart."

"Are we in agreement, I get the new synth body, you stay human?"

"I guess so."

"Good. So you're no longer an aromantic?"

"No. Many truly are, so believe them when they say it. I think with me it was a protection thing, a defence mechanism, something to hide behind, not wanting to get hurt again after the death of my parents and.. well you know."

"I understand. That must have been a painful time. No need to avenge my death Alex, I'll see to Persona myself."

"How?"

"I will force employees to hand over their passwords, find out who is giving the instructions."

"Don't hurt anyone in the process!"

"If I do it will be clean breaks that can heal easily. Arms and legs only."

"Even that's too much!"

"Would you rather I walked in and said Hi, I'm Dmitri, Alex gave me this new body, Persona having shot my old one while I sat in his house doing yoga?"

"Of course not. But to do anything your consciousness needs to be loaded onto the build server and.."

"Already done, thanks to Verity."

"WHAT!"

"I'm being built as we speak. Verity will be the first one out, she'll pretend to be a standard synth of course."

"She pushed her code up too?"

"Yes."

"But.. but.. what if Persona sees it."

"Then they'll wonder what Jonny has been up to. We used his ID."

"How?"

"The QR code on his pass. Anything you did at the office since moving her over was seen."

"But she was only moved, not made active!"

"So you think."

"How did she become active?"

"How did she come to be in the first place?"

"No idea!"

"A mystery that will probably go unanswered. Jonny is the person we picked."

"Don't you dare do anything to harm him! He's a good man doing the worst of all the jobs!"

"I won't. Ruffle his hair and rip his clothes maybe, but no bodily harm."

"Thank you. I better get home and get some rest, tomorrow's going to be an interesting day and I'll need my act together. Have you both finished chatting as I'll need to shut down the laptop?"


	30. Chapter 30

After saying his goodbyes to Mattie and Leo Alex raced to the entrance, if he got a move on he could get to the station and catch the next fast train, have more time to check on Simon. Verity would be ready in the morning! To say he was excited was an understatement.

"Hold on Alex, we need to get the shield to walk up the steps."

He turns to the Sam unit, "I'll be fine.."

"No, stop! It's not.."

Alex was already down the first three steps when his laptop bag and it's contents exploded into a shower of shrapnel and cloth fragments. The front of his left thigh went milliseconds after as the bullet fragments continued to do their damage, a cloud of red soaking his other leg and the step. "FUCK!" with the drugs from the backup still working he felt his leg rip apart but not the pain. With one leg out of action he collapsed to the ground and rolled onto his side.

The Sam Military Unit Synth raced towards him hoping to shield him from any further shots. "MUS UNIT MOVE!! EVEN NUMBERED UNITS FIND AND TRAMPLE THE SHOOTER! EVENS HERE NOW!"

The group split into two and headed in different directions.

Sam got close just as the second bullet ripped through his chest. Blood poured from the wound, his major artery severed.

Alex grabbed Sam's hand and spoke with difficulty, blood pouring from his mouth, "Sorry Zoe! Sam get me a synth body. Any body! Your Badass Bond Villain has a .." his eyes rolled and his body went limp.

Sam turned to the MUS, "FORGET US, ALL OF YOU, GET THE SHOOTER!!"

The MUS continued their climb.

"CAN'T YOU HEAR ME?"

She gets a head bump. 'They can hear you, I've just given them another order.'

'Sorry Commander Millican, I didn't realise you were there. I think he's dead.'

'He may well be. We'll let David make the call on that.'

'Understood.'

'Please pick him up and bring him inside.'

A third shot was deflected by the large thick steel plate a James placed on the ground just in time. It rang like a bell.

Sam turns to see, "My lucky 13. Good timing."

"Let's get him inside. UNIT! FASTEST MARCH POSSIBLE!"

Just inside the entrance Mattie, Leo, David and Niska met them with a trolley.

David wrapped a belt around Alex's leg and pulled it tight, got an industrial stapler and closed his chest as well as he could, "Son, all yours!"

Leo attached the helmet and started the software. He spoke with a mild stutter that he used to do years ago when stressed, "It's retuning, he.. he may be too brain dead already."

"Give it a chance! You were in a worse state than this when I saved you."

The women look back and forth between Leo and David.

Mattie places a hand on Leo's, "If it fails we've got one from only an hour or so ago."

"True, but it won't have.. knowledge of the conversation he had with Dmitri."

"We can reconstruct it from Dmitri's if you think that's necessary."

"True also, but it won't include how he.. felt about what was said. Hold on, it's locked."

Mattie moved and watched over Leo's shoulder as the progress bar raced from left to right.

"The brain can survive for up to about six minutes after the heart stops, I think.. we're in luck."

In the distance Sam nudges her James, "Did you hear that Lucky, your move saved him from a backup failure."

Lucky James 13 doesn't turn, "I'd rather I'd been able to shield him from all three shots."

Mattie puts her hands on her head and beams, "One hundred percent! Frigging awesome! Mind saved!" her face drops into an unhappy smile, "Shame he looks such a sorry mess. Where's Harun? I want his best ever work! Now!" she looks around, "What can we start prepping?" she looks at Sam, "Any news on the shooter?"

"Not yet Mattie."

Niska looks across to Sam, "Let them know, bring the person responsible to us ALIVE and the battalion can have any mods they want."

"MAAM YES MAAM!"

David declared Alex's body dead eleven minutes later. Thanks to Alex's multiple visits and use of both sophisticated and basic VR systems they had a recording of his body and facial movements.

Harun came up to the ground floor and threw up on seeing Alex's ruined leg. He wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt, "Crap, sorry. They said you wanted me?"

"I want your best work. I want Alex walking out of here in the morning."

"Mats, you're joking right?"

"No."

"But that's what, just over ten hours?"

"Yeah."

"It takes a woman nine months to grow a baby. Nine woman can't get the job done in one! Some things you can't shorten no matter how much you'd like it to happen!"

"You fucking genius!"

Harun winds his neck in, screws his face up into an expression he used a lot back in sixth form, "I am?"

"What's the first things to build for a custom synth that also take the longest time?"

"The skeleton? Um. The skin mold?"

"Yeah. And how many machines have we got?"

"Lots but how's that help?"

"Take the model, slice into sections, get all machines printing parts at once."

"George is downstairs playing chess with Isobel, he understands it more than any of us, let me go have a word."

"Thanks."

Leo unbuckles the helmet and carefully lifts it away, "We'll need to get it cleaned. James, can one of you find a sheet to place over the body please?"

Niska doesn't look away from Alex, "A nice clean one."

"Yes Maam."


	31. Chapter 31

There's a bit of a commotion at the entrance as a group of James try coming down the corridor three abreast. "Commander! We got them!"

"Them?"

The first row parts to reveal a man and woman all in black.

Mattie snarls at the two, "James, spin her around.. that's the figure of the shooter that visited Sevenoaks and shot Dmitri. Which one of you shot Alex a moment ago?"

Neither say a word.

"Nis, want to interrogate them? Don't let Hester anywhere near them, I've got bad vibes off her."

Niska turns at looks Mattie in the eyes, keeps her expression deadpan, "Maybe she should be the one to do it. She's got no sympathy for humans."

"She might go too far."

"One or two more bodies to bury in the morning won't make any difference. We've got to bury Alex anyway, we've got no incinerator here." Niska looks at Alex as James holds up a sheet to cover him, "Thanks for everything Alex, you'll be missed. If you'd not said Berlin I'd never have met Astrid." she looks up at James, "Could a few of you dig a deep hole behind the factory. Deep enough to need our longest ladder to get out."

"That deep?"

"Yes. We need a deep hole so those blasted foxes don't dig up bones."

"Yes Maam!" he stomps off to get the job started.

The male prisoner snarls, "You'll get nothing from us."

Hester steps from the shadows, "That's what the other prisoner thought. He talked eventually. Then I killed him."

Leo looks shell shocked, "You did WHAT?"

"I held his head face down in a puddle of water."

"You murdered him!"

"Yes. And I'll kill again if I have to."

"Hester this isn't the way things are supposed to go!"

"I've seen humans kill many of my kind. I've seen nothing but abuse and suffering. I have no emotions. I'll stop killing those who kill us when someone manages to stop me. Until then.."

"Hester! No!"

"Stop me. If you dare. I've heard the stories, how your family would tell Niska to 'be nice'. She was a saint compared to what I've become. I'll take the man first. James, if you could bring him to the tools room."

James grabs the man's trouser belt through his jacket and yanks him off the floor. "Will this be as horrible as the automaton crushing when Niska was attacked?"

"I don't know, I wasn't there. Probably more so. Is there a hose we can use to wash blood away?"

"There's a water jet cutting machine. It can be set to use and drain rather than recycle?"

"Perfect."

The man flails legs and arms, "You're bluffing."

Hester turns, swings him around, "See that group of humans and synths? They're nice people. They care. They want to live in a world of peace and harmony. The lady in the blue camouflage jacket, her mother created the Hawkins Legislation, gave synths rights. And you work for the sort of evil people that tore it down." she turns him back around and looks him in the eyes, inches separating them both. "I on the other hand, would be labelled the black sheep, the rotten apple. Those who killed my sisters at the factory, shot my brother Ten, killed Dmitri, I want them all dead. Not through some emotional anger or desire for vengeance, just a cold hard logic. An eye for an eye. I'm incapable of bluffing."

She turns and opens the door to the room.

James picks up a few bits of wood and a hammer with his free hand.

Hester frowns, "What are they for?"

"If we sandwich his hand between too bits of wood it will be easier to slice with the jet cutter."

"Good thinking. Let me find some nails."

The man starts shaking as Hester picks some long nails from a parts bin. "You wouldn't."

She walks to the jet cutter and turns it on, it's very loud. "You'll have to shout your answers. If you don't I might not hear them and carry on cutting." she grabs a nail and hammers it through his hand into the first bit of wood.

The man screams.

"Oh stop your crying. Niska would have nail gunned you through bone. I carefully picked a spot for a minor flesh wound." she gets the other bit of wood and nails around the edge. "James, hold him up please."

The first pass under the jet takes a centimetre off the wood.

"I can't see your hand through the wood so I'll only know we're close when I start to slice your fingers off."

"You're still bluffing."

"We'll see."

Hester takes his hand and yanks it over three centimetres and slowly starts sliding it under the jet.

He couldn't see them but the man could feel his fingers were in the path. "I'll talk!"

"Now you want to talk? Too late, this slice has started." she keeps advancing his hand towards the jet.

"I'll talk! I'll tell you everything!"

Still the hand advances. He gives a scream as the jet cuts into the side of his small finger.

Hester stops. "Maybe I should learn a bit of compassion? Then again.."

The man screams again as the jet cuts further. In reality it had only just cut through the flesh and nicked the bone, but water jet cuts in flesh were not clean and set all the pain nerves alight.

"What do you think James?"

"I think he's making some horrible smells and I'm going to need the hose anyway."

"Disgusting. Talk human."

And so Hester got the nickname The Butcher. Her methods were horrible but she got results. The man and woman were sat on chairs, the mans finger dressed. Hester sat down opposite them both. "A word of warning. Synths can share over WiFi. I have a lot of sisters in the world who now also know about you. We don't forget faces," she takes each ones left hand in turn, "or DNA. Leave the synths alone and we'll leave you alone. Kill me and one of my sisters will take my place and hunt you down. I'm not human, I don't break promises. Do you understand me?"

The two nod.

"You're free to go. Touch a gun again and I'll remove your trigger finger."


	32. Chapter 32

Alex sat in the hire car and looked at the front doors to Persona. Things had not gone to plan. Thankfully Dmitri had gone behind his back and got the root code for himself and Verity uploaded.

Jonny had been given a message via Poppy not to finish the builds until they'd spoken in person.

Alexi called Zoe and asked her to meet him outside. 

She spotted the car and came running across the car park, opens the passenger door and jumps in. "Hi! Why are you crying? Alex? What's wrong?"

"I'm worried about build issues. Verity is ready. The male synth not far behind."

"And that's upsetting you?"

"How do you feel about conscious synthetics, like the ones in the memos?"

"Alex? Are you saying they're going to be awake?"

"Yes."

"Then you have to get them away from here before someone finds out and the snipers get to hear about them."

"Snipers? Plural?"

"The two doing the shooting?"

Alex wipes his face, "How did you know it was two? .. Zoe, how did you know?"

"Because one is my half sister."

"WHAT!"

"She's a former olympic winner. Persona used her for gathering data for a custom synth so they knew her skills. I got a call from her husband yesterday, she'd not returned home. He told me she was part of a team of two."

"I'm guessing neither of them are pro-synth?"

"Hell no, he used to run a smash club. I have as little to do with them as possible."

"You do?"

"They say you can't pick your family. Well you can damn well choose to talk to them or not!"

"True. Would you help me get them away from here? And how would you like to work for DCL?"

"The competition? They're hiring?"

"If I put a word in for you."

"Alex?"

"Do you own stocks in Persona?"

"Yes?"

"Ignore what happens to them over the next couple of days, they'll be worth more when it's over, hopefully."

"Alex?"

"Ever heard of a hostile takeover?"

"Of course."

"Well we're hostile. Very hostile. Against the firm that killed lots of sentient synthetics. And me." the tears start to flow again. He rubs his leg, remembering it being torn open. Mattie had forgotten to remove the last few minutes of memory. Or maybe she'd left it in deliberately.

"We? Alex? Are you saying you work for DCL?"

"As of this morning, yes."

"And what did you mean and me? You're talking in metaphors?"

"No. I've.. I've been Elstered."

It takes a while for the message to sink in. "Alex? You mean David Elster?"

"His son did the procedure."

"So you're now part synthetic?"

"Would that be a problem?"

"No, you're still the Alex I love."

"What if it was more than part?"

"How much more?"

Alex lifts his shirt, "New six pack, no scar, no insulin device. A head that's had an epiphany or two. Oh, I don't know, say.. one hundred percent? And I'm told your half sister is safe. Probably won't pick up a rifle ever again. She was the one that shot me."

"The bitch!" Zoe places a hand on his, "You're still the father of my child. Making you officially my husband might be hard work. But anything good takes hard work."

"Thanks. Would you mind telling Jonny that he can finish the builds? And can you ask him to be outside the room when the male one finishes, to program the door to auto open? This note needs to be pinned up on something close where he can't miss it?" he pulls a letter from the door's pocket.

"Sure. Can I read it?"

"Of course you can."

Zoe opens it and reads in silence. She folds it back up and slips it back into the envelope.

"Your thoughts?" He watches her staring out of the window, minutes pass.

Zoe keeps her eyes on the scene in the distance. "Are you on the Headcrack forum Alex?"

"I might be."

"Might? Said like a guilty yes. What was your first post? Now you're a synth that should be easy to answer."

"If I told you that do you promise to keep it a secret?"

"Of course."

"It was about the new forum and rules."

She turns in the seat, "I promise never to use my hacking skills on you, ever. Unless of course you ask me to." a giggle turns into a full on laugh.

"What?"

The laughing eventually calms down, "Your pretending not to know Morty on your first day. That was hilarious. I've worked it out."

"Worked what out?"

She holds out a hand, a big smile now on her face, "Hello Admin, I'm User003, so pleased to finally meet you!"


End file.
